President Trump is using his Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida as his “Winter White House”. This is not that unusual a practice, as previous Presidents have done the same thing (for example, Nixon’s Western White House in San Clemente and Johnson’s LBJ Ranch in Texas). However, it is an extra expense for American taxpayers, because of all the security that has to be present wherever the President resides. If a President really needs time away to rest and think, we taxpayers are already paying the tab for Camp David in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountain Park. It’s pretty nice, I hear. But, I digress. Who cares about a few million more dollars, anyway?
More importantly, Mr. Trump has imported to his Winter Palace in Florida a new twist on the Presidency that he has been using at the White House: no record of the visitors who come to see him. Almost to the day that he took office, the official registry of visitors has been “off-line”. The same goes with President Trump’s guests at Mar-A-Lago.
So, the press, which keeps track of the comings and goings of government officials, world leaders, lobbyists, etc., on behalf of the American public, has no way to guess what is going on in “smoke-filled rooms” and who might be doing the mischief. This total lack of transparency by the Trump administration is totally out-of-character for the Executive Office. In fact, there is precedence for transparency in the Oval Office, and it was demanded and established as a result of Republican Party concerns, years ago, that they were being left out of the loop.
President Trump has little regard for the customs and traditions of the office, as he has previously shown by ignoring the long-standing tradition of making his tax returns public, and then staffing his White House with relatives.
Some Democratic legislators have introduced a bill (which would be called the Mar-A-Lago Act) which would require the White House to make available to the public the President’s visitor logs…no matter where he opts to conduct business.
It is a shame that we need laws to force Donald Trump to do the right thing.