Along the Atlantic Intra-Coastal Waterway in Palm Beach, Florida, the sea is choppy on a windy and humid November morning.
There is a police car parked at the entrance to the bridge leading to Mar-a-Lago, the landmark resort built a century ago for businesswoman Marjorie Merriweather Post, and another outside the gate of the 17-acre estate.
“Once you get to the end of the bridge, you have to come back,” a police officer says curtly.
Mar-a-Lago was bequeathed to the National Park Service after Post’s death in 1973. She had hoped it could be used as a location for state visits or as a presidential retreat. But due to maintenance costs and difficulties in securing the site, it was returned to her family’s foundation and sold to a businessman in the early 1980s. Donald Trump in 1985.
Post’s desire for her home to become a presidential retreat came to fruition in a sense when Trump was a regular at what is now a members-only club during his four years in the White House.
Locals say security has increased since the Republican candidate was targeted in what the FBI described as an attempted assassination at his golf club in West Palm Beach, about 4.5 miles away, in September.
Mar-a-Lago stretches along the ocean and another police vehicle was parked on a manicured lawn leading to the water. A few hundred meters away, in parking lots along the bridge, camera crews jostled for position, trying to capture the resort’s recognizable tiled roofs.
A day after Trump suggested at a rally that he wouldn’t mind if members of the “fake news” group were shot, journalists from the U.S., Belgium, France, Poland, Greece, Mexico, China and elsewhere gathered near his house.
“I have a piece of glass here, but all we have here is fake news. And to get me, someone would have to go through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much,” the former president told a crowd in Pennsylvania.
Trump, of course, had bigger fish to fry on Monday and toured some of the swing states to make a final appeal to voters to come out on Tuesday. The 78-year-old, who is understandably looking a little jaded at this stage of a long campaign, appeared in Raleigh, North Carolina (10 a.m. Eastern Time); two in Pennsylvania (Reading at 2 p.m. and Pittsburgh at 6 p.m.); and rounded out the day in Grand Rapids, Michigan (10:30 p.m.).
He is due back Tuesday to cast a vote, presumably for himself, at the Morton and Barbara Mandel Recreation Center in Palm Beach. He will hold an election observation party at a nearby convention center, where lanes are already closed and satellite trucks are parked.
Back on the bridge, a few performative Trump supporters coughed up what some members of the media were looking for, waving “Trump-Vance” signs at oncoming traffic, including a dumpster, and gaining their fair share of honks and to call. One of them, Rich, from nearby Delray Beach, insists Trump will win, and be big.
‘It’s the only way. The audience sees right through it Kamala (Harris), she is a fake, a puppet.”
Walking through Palm Beach and the wider area, it’s hard to imagine one election going on. There are few posters, canvassers and people who want to talk about politics.
Annie, unlocking her bike, says that everyone is very aware of what’s happening and might like to talk about it until the dust settles later in the week.
“It’ll be hard to avoid this tomorrow night,” she says. “It’s nice to have a little peace and quiet.”
Ron, who brings some coffee into his office, says his acquaintances seem to keep their cards closer to their chests than in the past when someone brings up the election.
“No one wants to start a fight,” he says. “But if one of them loses, we could have a riot.”