President-elect Donald Trump arrives to speak to reporters at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. | AP Photo/Evan Vucci Trump dubs Mar-a-Lago the new 'Winter White House'

Donald Trump officially designated Mar-a-Lago his “Winter White House” in Palm Beach in a Twitter message he posted Wednesday that includes a photo of him at the estate penning the first speech he’ll give as president of the United States in 48 hours.

“Writing my inaugural address at the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks ago,” Trump wrote. “Looking forward to Friday.”


Trump will be the second president behind John F. Kennedy to write his first speech as president on the exclusive island and he’ll be the fourth to make a South Florida residence a second White House, according to James C. Clark, a University of Central Florida history professor and author of the book “Presidents in Florida.”

Clark said Trump couldn’t have picked a more historic spot in Florida for a Winter White House than Mar-a-Lago, a stunning Mediterranean-style estate was completed in 1927 by Post Cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, who willed the property to the federal government in 1973 for use as a presidential retreat. Unwilling to pay for the upkeep, the federal government returned the property to the Post Foundation less than a decade later and Trump ultimately purchased it in 1985.

“All these years later, it’s finally a Winter White House and Donald Trump will be the president in it,” Clark said. “Who would have dreamed of that?”

Clark said “Winter White House” might be a misnomer because Trump loves the 17-acre waterfront estate and might spend some summer days there as well. Trump acquired the property for just $7 million cash — a steal for the mammoth historic treasure.

In his "Art of the Deal" book, Trump recounts how he paid less for the property on his second offer after the foundation rejected his first offer.

“It just goes to show that it pays to move quickly and decisively when the time is right,” Trump wrote.

Soon after the deal, he contested the $11.5 million taxable value assigned by the Palm Beach County property appraiser because he paid $7 million for it just days earlier. It was the first of numerous fights Trump would have with local governments and island neighbors over the property, which he converted into a club.

After a sharp-eyed observer on Twitter noted that Trump appeared to be using a receptionist’s desk, New York Magazine’s Madison Malone Kircher probed further and suggested the photo was staged.

“So we’re not saying that Trump didn’t write his speech, in Sharpie, on a legal pad, at this desk, with its magnificent and inspirational eagle statue. Obviously he did; why would the president-elect stage such a photograph?” Kircher wrote. “It seems clear the Secret Service cleared out Mar-a-Lago, to give Trump the privacy and quiet he needed, and he chose that particular hallway desk to begin writing his speech. Which is his right, as Mar-a-Lago’s owner.”

JFK made decidedly fewer waves in Palm Beach, where he began recuperating from World War II injuries at a home his father purchased years before. There, Kennedy began writing his well-received “Profiles in Courage” book and, later, his first inaugural address, Clark said.

Years later, the man Kennedy beat in his 1960 presidential race, Richard Nixon, made his winter residence farther south, in Key Biscayne. He first traveled there on the recommendation of a mutual friend of Kennedy’s, Florida Sen. George Smathers, who introduced Nixon to another mutual friend, Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, who was later accused of funneling illegal campaign contributions to Nixon. Nixon bought Smathers house on the key and journalists soon dubbed it the first “Winter White House.”

In another Florida twist, former Nixon operative Roger Stone lives in Fort Lauderdale and has been a longtime ally and occasional adviser to Trump.

“One of the first guys who thought Trump could be president was Richard Nixon,” said Stone, adding that he recounts details of the late 1980s meeting between the two men in his new book “The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump orchestrated a revolution.”

The first president to spend significant time in Florida was Harry S. Truman, who established the “Little White House” in Key West. Clark said Truman, president for nearly eight years, spent an average of a month a year in Key West. Clark said Truman came to Key West because he realized early in his administration that if he traveled to the southernmost island where there was a Naval station, the Navy would put him up and transport him there and pay for his vacation.

That’s not a consideration for Trump. He owns his own airplane and helicopter, which he has landed on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago.

“I cannot think of a starker contrast than Truman and Trump,” Clark said. “Truman came here because he was poor and Trump came here because he was rich. That’s Florida.”