‘Trump’s never going to leave Mar-a-Lago - he’ll go back to being a businessman’: President’s neighbours reflect on prospect of life after White House

With is his full-on swagger and abrupt manner, Donald Trump was for many decades, the epitome of a cliched New Yorker.

A constant C-list fixture in the gossip pages of the city’s tabloids, he ran for the White House - and won it - in part based on The Apprentice persona he and others created for himself.

So New Yorkers and Floridians alike were not just a little startled when, last year, the president announced he was formally moving his residency from the gold-plated glamour of Trump Tower, to the similarly lavish luxury of the Mar-a-Lago estate at Palm Beach.

Twelve months later it seems not only has the president settled in - over the weekend his voted in person for the first time every at a Palm Beach polling station - but that locals have taken to him too.

Indeed, when The Independent spoke to people at Lake Worth Beach, about a close as it is possible to get to Mar-a-Lago unless you a member of the club, the Secret Service, or else a resident of so-called Billionaires’ Row, there was dismay at the suggestion Mr Trump might move were he to lose the election.

“I think he will stay right here. He’s not going anywhere,” said 72-year-old Donna Cash, who had moved to Florida a few years ago from the east coast, and who was voting for the president. “He’ll go back to making money.”

John, a 51-year-old retired firefighter, said he also could see the president staying.

“Why would he go back to New York? He won’t go back to New York,” he said. He said the only reason he might conceivably leave the country, was that if Joe Biden won and he felt sad for “what America had done to itself”.

John, who asked not to give his full name, said he was also voting for the president.

He believed most Americans did not  “socialism or Antifa” but simply to go to work safely. “If he loses he will back to doing business. That is what he was doing before.”

A couple, who asked to be identified as Howard and Debbie, was also once New Yorkers and moved to Florida for better weather and lower taxes.

“They ran him out of New York,” claimed Howard. Asked who had run Mr Trump out of Gotham, he said that he and the Clintons had once been friends.

Yet when Mr Trump decided to run for president and challenge her, all their friends in New York turned on him. “He became a resident recently, lots of people do. There’s no sales tax here.”

Howard then gestured to the ocean filled with surfers. “The Florida winter is much better than in New York.”

Debbie said while she was also a supporter of the president, she wished he would take some lessons in decorum from the first lady, Melania Trump. “She is so elegant.”

Asked why he believed Mr Trump had run for office if, as he himself has claimed he did not need to, Howard said it was for one of two reasons. One was that he had everything in life. “The other is ego,” he said.

One person to suggest that Mr Trump may feel better off leaving if he lost, was Guilherme Frias, a 28-year-old professional tennis coach from Brazil who said he lived near Mar-a-Lago.

“He might feel safer somewhere away from here,” he said. “A lot of people don’t like him.”

That view was a minority, however.

Josh and Marie Miller was on vacation from Houston, Texas, with their two children.

They had not come to this beach because Mr Trump lived only a few miles away.  But they were supporters and said they would be voting for him.

Asked if he thought Mr Trump might leave the state if he lost, Mr Miller, who is self-employed, said:

“Why would he leave Mar-a-Lago? He is a businessman. He’ll go back to doing business. He’s still got a lot of friends.”