How Donald Trump loyalists and MAGA hustlers descended on Mar-a-Lago to fight for a role in his White House
Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk and lesser known Donald Trump backers like Melissa Rein Lively have been pushing for roles in the new administration.
Mar-a-Lago might have a million-dollar membership, but once you're in the club, you're close to the people and the president-elect who are building the next government of the United States.
For more than a week, various MAGA loyalists have been visiting Mar-a-Lago, taking one last chance to audition before the incoming commander-in-chief.
They've been vying for a spot in the Trump administration and in his official inner circle, whether that be a high-profile cabinet role or as a trusted advisor with the ear of the president.
Elon Musk, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Charlie Kirk — Donald Trump has surrounded himself with men of means, who own their own platforms, who have been willing to amplify his ideas, and who offer plenty of their own.
Their cash and influence helped Trump on election day and then as he was stocking his cabinet and his team of advisors, they waited for their names to be called.
Mr Musk has a gig, and Mr Kennedy has now secured one too.
Trump has appointed firebrand congressman Matt Gaetz to the highest law office in the country as attorney-general, something far-right commentator Mr Kirk endorsed.
He has also handed the Department of Defense and its 3 million employees to Fox News host Pete Hegseth.
Women are there too, with Trump naming the first female White House chief of staff in Susie Wiles.
Security has been increased at Mar-a-Lago, and this robotic dog is a new addition to the team.
All eyes are on the cabinet positions, but there are thousands of roles to fill before Trump takes over in January, and Mar-a-Lago and surrounding hotels are crawling with White House hopefuls who want to secure one for themselves.
They know Trump rewards loyalty.
Experts say members of the US Senate know this too.
Because the cabinet positions and more than 1,000 other appointments will need to be confirmed by the Senate, something Trump technically can't control.
There is, however, a shortcut around the confirmation process, and given the opportunity, Trump has said he would take it.
A week in Mar-a-Lago
Mar-a-Lago was once the opulent home of an American cereal heiress who imagined her 100-room mansion and its sprawling estate would one day become a presidential retreat.
Trump purchased the property in 1985 and 30 years later, it realised that original ambition and became his "Winter White House".
Now, Mar-a-Lago is the centre of power as Trump builds his administration.
Inside its grounds, people like Melissa Rein Lively are standing ready to make their elevator pitches.
She has been running a very public campaign to become Trump's press secretary.
"I mean, listen, the guy had the show The Apprentice for eight years. If you want a job in the Trump White House, you better audition," she told the ABC.
"And that's exactly what I'm doing."
Melissa Rein Lively has been at Mar-a-Lago this week trying to make waves.
Ms Rein Lively rose to prominence after a video of her destroying a mask display in a shop during the COVID-19 pandemic went viral, and has previously described herself as the "QANON spokesperson", although she now distances herself from the conspiracy theory.
She runs an "anti-woke" PR firm and described the jockeying for White House positions going on at Trump's sprawling Florida estate as "like House of Cards on the lido deck".
"It's amazing. It's the most electric, exciting atmosphere that I've ever been a part of," she said.
"It's not just Mar-a-Lago. Palm Beach is like ground zero for all [the negotiations]. It's like the centre of the universe right now."
Author of Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump's Presidential Palace, Laurence Leamer lived in Palm Beach before Trump arrived and has been a guest of Mar-a-Lago several times.
He called Palm Beach "an island of privilege".
"The irony is that Trump is supposedly a populist president caring about the masses of the people, and Palm Beach is so far away from that," Mr Leamer told the ABC.
Getting into the private club is difficult, and it's not just because of the reported $US1 million joining fee.
Ms Rein Lively says security has been beefed up at the complex after two assassination attempts on the president-elect's life.
"There are checkpoints all over the island," she said.
"You can't even really get over the bridge to get to where Mar-a-Lago is unless you pass security and then the list is obviously extremely tight."
Melissa Rein Lively strikes a pose on a sun lounge at Mar-a-Lago.
Evening meals on the patio take on a life of their own. Trump enters to the Village People's disco classic YMCA — which has become a campaign anthem — and a standing ovation.
There are reports Mr Musk's hype song is Space Oddity.
Trump dines at a table that has been roped off, although that doesn't stop people from sidling up in an attempt to gain his ear.
Attendees dine on roasted octopus and scallops, lamb shanks, Wagyu steak, branzino, tuna tartar and — among the most popular dishes, according to Ms Rein Lively — braised cabbage.
"I've eaten there so many times this week, I'm kind of sick of the food," she said.
Before sitting down to eat, the whole crowd recites the pledge of allegiance.
Mr Leamer said Trump has long felt relaxed inside his "presidential palace".
"He'll sit there for three hours for dinner and people come one after another, spend 15 minutes with him. They just sit down and talk to him," he said.
"Membership is now $US1 million. It's a lot of money, but if you get a billion-dollar government deal out of it, it's cheap.
"It's a dinner club. When he's there, the club is full, otherwise it's not."
Right now, Ms Rein Lively said if Trump was not on the patio, he was in a meeting room with his transition team and a bunch of TVs, working out who goes where in the West Wing.
Ms Rein Lively, who lives in Arizona, attended Trump's official election night function at Mar-a-Lago and has based herself in Palm Beach since.
She's all in on trying to make it to the White House.
Jobs for his most faithful
The phrase that keeps being repeated by commentators, congressional representatives and Trump watchers more generally, is that the president-elect is rewarding loyalty.
As the announcements from the Trump-Vance transition team started to roll in there was an initial sense that he was delivering on promises made in the campaign.
On Monday, Trump announced Mr Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would lead something called the Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to take a razor to the public service.
It's a new initiative that has not existed under previous administrations and that will not need to be confirmed by the Senate.
Mr Musk — the world's richest man — has called for the government to slash spending by $US2 trillion.
Mr Ramaswamy, a wealthy entrepreneur, stood unsuccessfully against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination before joining the MAGA fold.
Since then, Trump has delivered two massive shocks in his appointments for secretary of defence and his attorney-general.
Trump has selected army veteran and television presenter Hegseth as secretary of defence.
Hegseth, a host on Fox News, has a longstanding relationship with Trump, but his appointment came as a surprise.
He served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has previously criticised the military for allowing women in combat roles, saying standards had been lowered to facilitate it.
The Ivy League graduate had expected to be on duty at Joe Biden's inauguration, but later told Fox News that "members of my unit in leadership deemed that I was an extremist or a white nationalist because of a tattoo I have".
Questions have also been raised about the level of security clearance Hegseth will be able to get and the fact he has no policy experience.
Pete Hegseth has gone from interviewing Donald Trump to being the person selected to run the United States military.
On Wednesday afternoon, local time, Trump announced Mr Gaetz, a Republican congressman from Florida, as his pick for attorney-general — the country's highest legal office.
Mr Gaetz is renowned for sparring with Democrats and politicians from his own party. He resigned from Congress after Trump's announcement.
Among multiple controversies are his statements about women holding rallies advocating for reproductive rights, who he has described as "overweight" and "ugly".
The House Ethics Committee had been investigating allegations Mr Gaetz had been part of a plot that led to the sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl, along with multiple other allegations including whether he had engaged in illicit drug use, sexual misconduct and accepted improper gifts.
Mr Gaetz denied all the allegations and the probe was derailed on Wednesday when he resigned from Congress.
The appointment of Matt Gaetz as United States attorney general has sent shock waves through Washington DC.
Long-time ally Dan Scavino, who served as an assistant in Trump's previous administration, has been announced as a deputy chief of staff.
Mr Scavino made headlines this week when he posted on social media a GIF of sand trickling through an hourglass above Australia's Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd's official statement on Trump's election victory.
Before he became ambassador, Mr Rudd described Trump as "the most destructive president in history" in a social media post which has since been deleted.
The United States is meant to be a country of checks and balances, so even though Trump's agenda is the will of the majority of American people, his appointments have raised some ethical questions.
Is Mr Gaetz an appropriate person to be the United States attorney-general?
Should a cable television host be given the keys to the Pentagon?
There is a process in place that gives the Senate power to interrogate those questions and ultimately be the body to confirm Trump's choices.
Trump's 'attempts to grab more power'
While Trump has been announcing his picks for America's top jobs, there has been a subplot playing out because he will need to get most of these selections confirmed by the Senate.
The Senate leadership was, until a few days ago, up for grabs and of the three people in the running, one was a known MAGA loyalist.
That guy didn't win and instead, Republican John Thune won the secret ballot.
Immediately after that vote, when he fronted the press pack, the first question to Senator Thune was about whether he would support Trump's appointments.
Trump has made it very clear that he expects the new Senate leader to help him get his appointments confirmed, specifically he wants help to take a shortcut to do it.
There is a mechanism that permits a president to confirm their own appointments if the Senate is in an extended period of recess.
"The president said he wants recess appointments but, he doesn't want just normal recess appointments," said senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University Joshua Huder.
"He wants to recess appoint hundreds of positions, which is another way of saying, I would like to circumvent the Senate and that's a different kind of recess appointment.
"That's asking the Senate to literally give up their authority over the personnel of the executive branch and that's a bit more extreme. It's absolutely an opportunity or an attempt to grab more power."
John Thune makes a point to reporters on Capitol Hill this week.
The newly elected Senate leader has said he would "explore all options" to get Trump's picks confirmed.
"We're going to make sure that we're processing his nominees in a way that gets them into those positions so they can implement his agenda … how that happens, remains to be seen," Senator Thune said.
Republicans will control both the House and the Senate.
And now the conversation in Washington DC is very much focused on will the Republicans in the Senate either support Trump's selections, allow a recess that would see him go it alone, or break with the man who controls their party and block an appointment.
That will come down to whether Senate Republicans are loyal to Trump or not.
There is less resistance to Trump in the Republican Party than there was eight years ago, but Dr Huder said for something like secretary of defence, there were still senators who would likely take issue with Trump's selection.
"This will get more scrutiny because the president-elect has alluded at various times about using the military in capacities that are not typical, like using the military to help deport migrants or immigrants that are in the country illegally, using the military to suppress protests, firing generals," he said.
"The politicisation of the military … would be an extreme breach of democratic norms."
Of Fox News host Hegseth as secretary of defence, Dr Huder said: "I would not be surprised if this is a position that does not pass muster.
"There are a lot of senators who are very interested in what the Pentagon does and how it does it," he said.
Either way, whatever confirmation hearings do happen are likely to be "confrontational".
"We have just broadsides all the time in the Senate about these nominees and what they're going to do," Dr Huder said.
"And we see more hostile nominees and hostile confirmation hearings where the candidate on the opposite side of the dais from the senators is taking on more aggressive stances … because they see that as a way to shore up their own base.
"I expect them to be pretty controversial and pretty confrontational."
By：ABC(责任编辑：admin)
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