This has included a steady stream of Republican senators and congressmen seeking his endorsement—indeed, almost every Republican officeholder or seeker, save the few opposed to him, who can make the trip seems set to come to Mar-a-Lago to slavishly attend to him. During a spring afternoon, he takes twenty minutes with Jerry Moran, the senator from Kansas—“We have the longest unbroken chain of Republican incumbents,” says Moran. “You don’t say,” says a less-than-interested Trump. Moran presses on to lavishly thank the former president for his support. Rick Scott, the Florida senator, got a dinner invitation—joined by the actor Jon Voight, a Trump devotee. Wilbur Ross, the former secretary of commerce, in a bright-green jacket not quite the color of money, stands at his shoulder for a moment. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary, running for governor of Arkansas, is holding a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago that evening. Dan Scavino, his former golf course manager, social media tender, and closest White House aide, is in the house. Sean Hannity, the Fox anchor, calls, and Trump shares the call with those around him—and, effectively, with anyone at Mar-a-Lago who wants to listen in.

Some Mar-a-Lago members try to keep a respectful, albeit rapt, distance. But one after the other of the more or less forward stop to express fulsome admiration, if not nearly teary awe, with the most forward asking for a selfie, which, begrudgingly, he grants. Each greeting and genuflection becomes an opportunity for him to comment to the other people in the tighter circle of genuflection on how much he is loved and how much they, the people, have been hurt by the election that has been stolen from him. This is not, however, said in bitterness, but with some sense of the expansiveness and majesty, even transcendence, of a regime and court that have merely shifted to a better location.

Trump lives here now—here in the middle of a country club. He and Melania are its singular residents. Or, well … maybe Melania lives here. For four years in the White House, it was never quite clear how much time she was spending at the White House or in a house in Maryland where she had settled her parents. Aides were careful not to closely inquire or openly wonder. Here too, in Mar-a-Lago, it was unclear.

Trump had bought Mar-a-Lago, the 1920s parvenu creation of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the socialite and cereal heiress, in 1985, during the first peak of Trump mania, meaning it to be his Palm Beach estate. But with his vast debts closing in on him in the early 1990s, he converted the place to a private club for paying members.

Old-fashioned club life dominates: wine tastings, Croquet Singles, Asian Night, Italian Night with an accordion player, Prime Rib Night, an Easter egg hunt, Mother’s Day brunch. Hand-lettered poster boards spell out the schedule.