Palm Beach Notebook!

Florida is the country's new power center and Palm Beach is unrecognizable...

Mar-a-Lago

Dear Readers,

A quick note to let you know, yes, I am alive and kicking…I am also going over the edits of my book with my co-author James Patterson (with whom I lunched in Palm Beach on Sunday) so that’s keeping me out of trouble.

I’m still digesting my recent travels and immersion into Trump World and what it all means.

My knee-jerk takeaways:

1.Palm Beach is no longer the sunny enclave for snowy-haired, face-lifted Rolls Royce drivers who sip chardonnay at lunch time and who eat dinner at 6pm that I recall. (And I was last there less than a year ago.)

No, the place is now heaving with MAGA grifters. Walk into any of the restaurants, clubs and hotels and instead of the genteel hum one expects, the decibel level is high and the tables are crammed with with flush-faced daytime drinkers all in pursuit of the same thing: keeping up to date with the minute-by-minute news coming out of Mar-a-Lago. And then monetizing it. (The exception is the grand hotel, The Breakers, which looks and feels the same as it always did, and thus is considered to be of little value by the MAGA crew - because people with small children go there - and who wants that?! None of this lot, to be sure.)

Walk around and you bump into Rudy Giuliani podcasting. A lobbyist I promised not to name, who tells me he has made $200 million from representing foreigners anxious to get on Trump’s radar, spends his days bar-hopping to meet desperados (and they exist) who will pay him ridiculous sums to get in the Boss’s ear. That he has never met Trump is an unimportant detail.

And if you think that’s a head-scratcher, one night at dinner I sat between Brazil’s richest man, who has spent a little time in prison (he was charming, incidentally) and the strip club king of Miami (also, very charming. He’s not been in prison. I learned a lot; he gave me his card and I was momentarily perplexed by the two different icons for phones until I realized that one is a reservation line to get into his clubs). Across from me were some of the Trump kids’ friends who told me that Elon Musk is actually a very pleasant dinner guest. (Victoria Beckham apparently asked him recently “what is a black hole?” and he gave her an answer that was easy for everyone to follow, apparently, so that’s…something.)

But my biggest take-away is:

2. Florida, however, now feels like the power-center of this country. The state of opportunity. And Palm Beach is its capital. Think about it proportionally in terms of who is in Trump’s administration. Wiles, Rubio, Bondi, Waltz, Huckabee, Oz, Blanche, Weldon, (and for a minute, Gaetz), all are Floridians. So you can imagine the blood-rush for all those who now have easy-access. The place - or at least the places I went - feel drunk with power and opportunity.

And part of the moving-and-shaking is a calculated guessing game as to how the Florida chess pieces will be moved around on Trump’s board. Will Rubio last all four years? Doubtful according to some of this lot. Ron De Santis wants to be Defense Secretary, apparently, in two years time when his governorship ends. So, the scuttlebutt is he’ll let Lara Trump take Rubio’s vacated senate seat in exchange for something. (Dangerous deal-making that leaves plenty of room for Trump to renege.)

And so on.

In less interesting news, ever the optimist - and, as you know, the golfer, too - I took my golf clubs with me and you’ll be glad to know I was playing exceptionally well - for the first three shots - until I got close to the green - when I discovered I’d left my sand wedges in New York. (I was playing with three guys so borrowing their clubs wasn’t quite the perfect solution.) Gah!

Anyway, all in all it was a very fruitful trip, and I will share more with you when I can. Meanwhile, I’ve got a fabulous surprise podcast guest lined up and I will share details about that with you shortly.

But as a coda for today, I will share with you the gracious note from my host at the eclectic Palm Beah dinner party. “You are always such a great part of any conversation!! Even Strip club owners love you.”

What a promising note to end on!

Happy Thanksgiving!