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Tracking Trump’s picks for his Cabinet and administration

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Julia Demaree Nikhinson

Since President-elect Donald Trump’s historic victory last week, Melissa Rein-Lively has spent as much time as possible at his club, Mar-a-Lago, “wheeling and dealing like nobody’s business,” she told The Washington Post.

The 39-year-old publicist first gained notoriety during the pandemic when she live-streamed herself at a Target in Scottsdale, Arizona, yelling expletives as she <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/11/masks-qanon-target-melissa-rein-lively/" target=_blank>destroyed a display of masks</a> intended to prevent the spread of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">coronavirus</a>.

Now, Rein-Lively says she wants to be press secretary for the second Trump administration. And, she said, she believes Mar-a-Lago is her golden ticket to Washington.

“Right now, it’s showtime,” Rein-Lively said. At Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Florida, she was able to promote herself “at the absolute highest level, in an orbit that is essentially impenetrable by everyone else in America,” she said.

While Rein-Lively has managed to snap a few pictures with Trump insiders at Mar-a-Lago, there is no sign that she is in the running for any position in the incoming administration. She told The Post on Tuesday that Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick had called to offer her the press secretary job. She declined to provide any evidence of such a call, and Lutnick denied her claim, saying, “Under no circumstances do I call anyone, ever.”

Obtained by The Washington Post

But the emphasis Rein-Lively put on being seen with the GOP in-crowd at Mar-a-Lago is a sign of the venue’s resurgence as an unorthodox center of political power: a lavish seaside social club from which a White House transition is being run, where hundreds of members and their guests rub shoulders with Trump’s inner circle and perhaps even with the former and future president himself.

The club has become increasingly central to Trump’s political and personal life since his first election in 2016, when he conducted the transition largely from his office in Trump Tower in Manhattan and his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. That time around, in an effort that seemed engineered for public consumption, many candidates for Trump’s first Cabinet either passed a phalanx of reporters camped in the Trump Tower lobby or posed with the president-elect for photos outside the stately New Jersey club.

Since then, Mar-a-Lago has become Trump’s primary residence and its dining room a frequent pilgrimage site for anyone seeking to connect  with him, including wealthy business executives, foreign politicians, long-shot job seekers — and real contenders for high-profile administration positions.

Fox News host Pete Hegseth <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/12/trump-cabinet-cia-israel-white-house-counsel-nominations/" target=_blank>flew to the club</a> this week for conversations with Trump that ended in an offer to serve as defense secretary, for example, while Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) — who visited Monday, The Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/11/11/mike-waltz-national-security-adviser-trump-cabinet/" target=_blank>previously reported</a> — has been named Trump’s pick for secretary of state. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s choice to co-lead an effort to slash federal spending, has been huddling with Trump at the club over the past week, photographs show.

Jabin Botsford

Previously, Trump benefited from the appeal of proximity to power by raising the fee for club memberships, which are capped at 500 by an agreement with the town of Palm Beach. When Trump ran for president in 2015, the club charged a $100,000 initiation fee, The Post reported at the time. By this year, new members were asked to pay an initiation fee of about $700,000, a person familiar with the cost <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/2024/05/10/mar-a-lago-trump/" target=_blank>told The Post</a> in May.

A month after The Post’s report, Mar-a-Lago manager Bernd Lembcke confirmed the $700,000 figure in an interview with <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-trump-interview-transcript/" target=_blank>Bloomberg Businessweek</a>. Lembcke added that the club planned to raise the fee to $1 million in October. “We have four memberships to sell, so we are not desperate,” he told the magazine.

In the days since his reelection, Trump has again been floating the idea of raising the fee, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.

Heather Rinkus, Trump’s executive assistant at Mar-a-Lago, did not answer questions about the club’s membership fees. “We don’t share any of this information. It’s a private club,” Rinkus said. She declined to comment further.

Trump bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985 and turned it into a club about a decade later. It is open to members, their guests, and anyone else with a purchased ticket to one of the countless charity galas or other events at the venue. The club’s accessibility has at times led to controversy for Trump, including when he found himself <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/25/trump-fuentes-ye/" target=_blank>dining</a> with white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, whom the rapper Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) had brought as a guest.

Mar-a-Lago also poses national security concerns along with physical risks for the president-elect, who has been the target of two apparent assassination attempts since July.

Joe Raedle

“This is a private residence. It’s a club. It’s a complicated location to secure,” said former acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Michael R. Sherwin, who prosecuted a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mar-a-lago-intruder-had-cash-and-additional-electronics-in-her-hotel-room-prosecutors-say/2019/04/08/2edd875a-5a22-11e9-a00e-050dc7b82693_story.html" target=_blank>high-profile trespassing case</a> involving a Chinese woman who entered Mar-a-Lago in 2019 with a thumb drive suspected of containing malware. “You have beach access. You have clients who are private club members who are having bat mitzvahs and weddings at the same time the president may be there.”

Managing the presidential transition from the club has also caused challenges for some of Trump’s senior staffers. Decisions are often made at Mar-a-Lago suddenly and then released, while much of the staff is in an office across the Intracoastal Waterway in West Palm Beach, one senior adviser said. “There are times where we hear someone is going to be announced, and you go, ‘How did that happen?’” the adviser said.

“President-Elect Trump is making decisions on who will serve in his second Administration. Those decisions will continue to be announced by President Trump when they are made,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the transition, said in a statement.

Only an elite few are privy to the transition conversations behind closed doors, but these insiders tend at meal times to spill out into the club’s more public spaces, mingling freely. And while Trump eats at a table that is roped off and surrounded by Secret Service agents, he is also known to wander around the club’s dining area, greeting club members and talking to their guests.

Trump has stayed at the club since his reelection, often spending hours on the patio, many times with his iPad, advisers have said.

Jim Worthington, a wealthy Bucks County, Pennsylvania, fundraiser for the Trump campaign, said he was one of hundreds who dined alongside Trump at Mar-a-Lago’s patio Saturday evening.

“He sits right out there with everybody. I mean, literally, there’s people 10 feet away on either side. He’s very accessible, and he’s very visible, and he’s very engaged,” said Worthington, who said he joined the club in 2022. “They don’t allow you to go right up to his table, though you’re only four feet, three feet from them.”

During the first Trump administration, Mar-a-Lago members had ringside seats to historic moments, including one particularly memorable summit with then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when dinner on the patio was interrupted by intelligence reports that North Korea had launched a ballistic missile.

At the time, experts worried the porous nature of the club made it an easy target for foreign adversaries hoping to gain access to the president. Such concerns remained after Trump left office when the FBI found classified documents, including some with national security secrets, stored haphazardly at the estate.

Trump has been frustrated with the road closures and number of snipers guarding the club since the attempt on his life in July, advisers have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/19/trump-secret-service-assassination-security/" target=_blank>previously</a> told The Post. Members have also complained about the increasingly onerous security.

“I don’t go too often because, frankly speaking, it is such a mess to get in, especially when Donald is there,” said<b> </b>longtime club member George Lombardi, an Italian-born Trump supporter who has campaigned for far-right political candidates in Europe, including Marine Le Pen of France.

But he said he has been just as annoyed by eager new members hoping to be seen with Trump, who have arrived in such numbers that it can be impossible to get into the dining room.

Last week’s election night watch party at the club — a more exclusive affair than the official campaign party — was also crowded with those eager to demonstrate their support for Trump.

Among those in attendance, according to interviews and a Post review of social media posts, was British member of Parliament and Brexiteer Nigel Farage; Hary Tanoesoedibjo, an Indonesian magnate and politician who has partnered with Trump on luxury  developments; and Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the far-right former president of<b> </b>Brazil. Guests posed with MAGA celebrities such as Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been tapped to co-lead an advisory commission that’s being called the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/11/12/elon-musk-trump-doge-vivek-ramaswamy/" target=_blank>Department of Government Efficiency</a> with Musk, and Matt Gaetz, now Trump’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/11/13/trump-attorney-general-matt-gaetz/" target=_blank>pick for attorney general</a>.

Rein-Lively, the publicist whose conspiracy-theory-fueled pandemic rage went viral in 2020, said she was also there. She said she was invited that evening by a club member she declined to name.

Dominic Valente

Rein-Lively <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/11/masks-qanon-target-melissa-rein-lively/" target=_blank>told The Post</a> in late 2020 that her outburst had been a “mental breakdown episode” that came after a period in which she became absorbed with QAnon conspiracy theories and began sharing her thoughts in online videos, including some using racist language for which she has apologized. The Target episode resulted in involuntary hospitalization and nearly in the loss of her livelihood and marriage.

Now she says it was all a stunt, setting in motion a years-long effort to put herself in a position to be Trump’s press secretary.

Access to Mar-a-Lago since Election Day has helped her win the attention of several major news organizations that have mentioned her social media campaign for the press secretary position. And after several days of posting photos of herself at the club, Rein-Lively did get one high-profile endorsement from Trump’s former national security adviser   Michael Flynn, who wrote Monday in a post on X that she “would be great choice!”

When asked about his support for Rein-Lively, Flynn replied “What’s it to you?” before hanging up. His post was later deleted.

By Thursday, the club had informed some people that Rein-Lively was no longer welcome at the property, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Rein-Lively disputed their account, writing in a text, “There is ABSOLUTELY no way I am banned from anywhere.”

Sarah Blaskey is an investigative reporter on The Washington Post’s rapid-response investigations team. 

Sarah Blaskey

 United Nations Foundation Prize for humanitarian coverage, 2016

Binghamton University, BA in Geography

Samuel Oakford is a video reporter for The Washington Post's Visual Forensics team. Before joining The Post, he worked as a senior journalist at Storyful and a reporter for Vice News at the United Nations. He was also a reporter for the civilian harm monitor Airwars and conducted open source investigations for Bellingcat's Yemen Project. 

Samuel Oakford

White House Correspondents Award for Deadline Reporting

University of South Carolina

Josh Dawsey is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017 and previously covered the White House. Before that, he covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal.

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