But Trump didn’t give a damn about the Palm Beach gentry or their prejudices. Almost from the day he arrived, he made it clear he was not going to wear the washed-out colors of the Wasp elite, but would be the archetypal brash, in-your-face New Yorker whom the establishment abhorred. He purchased the incredible property for $5 million, plus $3 million for its furnishings and another $2 million for a strip of beachfront, closing one of the greatest residential real-estate deals in American history. (These days, the property is worth as much as $160 million, according to Forbes.)

Quickly, he set about disrupting the island’s prim social calendar. The Preservation Foundation, the most prestigious organization on the island, was used to having its annual gala at Mar-a-Lago. Trump said that could continue but it would have to hold the event in a tent, not in the mansion itself. Trump preferred a good enemy to a bad friend, and by that single act he created a slew of Palm Beachers who despised him.

Trump’s friends did not spend their days pondering what they could do to advance Donald, but his enemies woke up each morning thinking about what they could do to destroy him. When Trump got in serious financial troubles in the early 90s, he sought to build eight homes on his massive property, something another developer might have received approval for. But the Preservation Foundation led the fight to deny him that right.

Trump could have gone to the town council hat in hand, humbly asking for permission. That was the Palm Beach way, but Trump had never done such a thing in his life. He fought them straight on, blustering and boasting and threatening, calling for lawsuits and a plague on those who opposed him. He was undoubtedly the most unpopular person on the island, and the town council turned him down. But after that, Trump fought it as a political battle. He was a natural politician, able to ingratiate himself with many of those he sought to please. In the end, the town council voted three to two to let Trump have his club rather than the eight mansions.

The Mar-a-Lago Club opened in 1995 as a spirited mixture of Jews and Christians, and for that alone it was a historic first for the island. Trump had presumably done this to make a buck, not for any broad social purpose, but he had done it nonetheless. He had black members in a town where at one time African Americans could not move freely on the island, and was thought to be the first club owner to admit an openly gay couple. Thanks to Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City, he was able to bring in some of the greatest singers and groups in the country to perform. James Brown, Donna Summer, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, the Beach Boys, and Huey Lewis and the News all got up on stage at Mar-a-Lago.

At the time, probably no one else would have had the guts to start such a club. Mar-a-Lago was the center of the New Money, a whole new breed of Palm Beacher that cared little for the old rites. They flashed their money and boasted of their success and brought both new energy and new vulgarity to Palm Beach. Trump ruled over them all. “I’m the king of Palm Beach,” he once boasted to Trump biographer Tim O’Brien. “They all come over, they all eat, they all love me, they all kiss my ass. And then they all leave and say: ‘Isn’t he horrible.’ But I’m the king.”

Trump dances on stage during a musical performance at Mar-a-Lago, circa 2005. From Davidoff Studios/Getty Images.

Trump had taken on what he considered a corrupt, entrenched establishment, and not only won but won completely, pushing the blue bloods back into their private clubs, their nights of gin & tonics and endless laments. When he announced his candidacy for the presidency, it was Palm Beach writ large, a great battle against what he deemed another corrupt elite. And he used many of the same techniques that he first employed in Palm Beach. He attacked his opponents with mocking jeers as the lap dogs of the establishment. He gave them no quarter and never retreated from anything he said or did. To help him on his seemingly quixotic quest, he enlisted all kinds of marginal characters, from Roger Stone to Paul Manafort, giving them status they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else.