By: Devika Kandelwal
August 28 2020
Misleading: On Palm Beach, Trump led a crusade to allow Jews and Blacks into private clubs.
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The Verdict Misleading
Based on reports, Trump did allow Jews and Blacks into his private club, but it was a business move, not a crusade.
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Based on reports, Trump did allow Jews and Blacks into his private club, but it was a business move, not a crusade.Mar-a-Lago (in Spanish, sea-to-lake) was a mansion built by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1927. Trump bought the 128-room, 20-acre estate and its furnishings in 1985, for $9 million. He used Mar-a-Lago as a private residence until 1995 and then tried to subdivide the property but was denied. He then turned it into a private club and opened it to anyone who could afford the $100,000 initiation fee. On the fourth night of the Republican National Convention, Ben Carson, United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said that Trump led a crusade in Palm Beach to allow Jews and Blacks into his private club, implying that he allowed Jews and African Americans to become members at Mar-a-Lago for humanitarian reasons. As a business move, Trump did allow Jews and African Americans to take membership in the club, making it different from most private clubs in Palm Beach. Trump accepted African Americans and Jews at a time when most private clubs in Palm Beach, Fla., were not open to them. According to the Washington Post, Trump's club was the first to accept African Americans and openly gay couples. But it was a business move, not a crusade. Laurence Leamer wrote in his book, 'Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump's Presidential Palace,' that Trump's lawyer Paul Rampell persuaded Trump of the business value of a wider membership by arguing that Palm Beach had many Jewish residents, but they had no real club of their own.