‘It’s just nukes.’ Trump brushed off N. Korean missile to show off singer at Mar-a-Lago
Following is an excerpt from the upcoming book ‘The Grifter’s Club’ by Miami Herald journalists Sarah Blaskey, Nicholas Nehamas and Jay Weaver and former Herald journalist Caitlin Ostroff, now with the Wall Street Journal. Copyright © 2020. Available from PublicAffairs, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Mar-a-Lago was bustling on the second night of President Donald Trump’s Southern White House summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Feb. 11, 2017. A high-society wedding reception was in full swing in the club’s grand ballroom, and both the terrace and dining room were packed with members and their guests eager to catch a glimpse of such a historic moment or, better yet, have a chance to brush shoulders with some of the most powerful people in America.
At dinner Trump’s team took the terrace with a newfound swagger.
They posed for pictures with club members. Businessman Richard DeAgazio, who had recently joined the club, posted several photographs to Facebook, including one with a man he identified as “Rick,” saying he was the aide-de-camp who carries the nuclear football — the briefcase that serves as a mobile command center from which the president can launch a nuclear attack. Steve Bannon sauntered to his seat, glancing to the side and giving a sort of celebrity-style finger point and nod to some nearby diners. Another member, the Palm Beach crystal merchant Ildikó Varga, congratulated Bannon for masterminding such a successful campaign. “Thank you, but it was a team effort,” he responded. The notoriously camera-shy advisor then posed for a picture with her and a few other dinner guests.
The Saturday dinner was a stately affair. The small round table of the previous night — when Trump and Abe dined with Mar-a-Lago member Robert Kraft — had been replaced by a long table where various aides now joined the mix.
Dawn Basham, one of Trump’s favorite lounge singers, was the evening’s entertainment. A few years before Trump took office Basham had performed at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, where the former beauty queen’s voice — and her ability to stun in an evening gown — caught the Don’s attention.
Intent on showing off to Abe, Trump sent his aides to bring Basham right up to their table. This happens a lot to performers at Mar-a-Lago: They are asked to stand next to the table and sing his requests. Usually something from Phantom of the Opera or Cats.
As Abe listened, Trump requested four songs and told Basham what a great job she was doing.
Then the president asked Basham to twirl around for the men, according to someone who witnessed the exchange.
_fitted.png "Screen Shot 2020-03-28 at 12.29.05 PM (1)_fitted.png")
If Trump’s behavior bothered the singer, you wouldn’t have known it. Basham is a Marilyn Monroe type — but with a much better voice.
Asking her to twirl for a foreign head of state probably wasn’t the most embarrassing thing Trump had ever done to her either. A few years earlier Trump sang “Happy Birthday” to Basham in front of a full house at the club. Before he began, Trump declared to the crowd that singing was something he wouldn’t even do for his wife.
Basham’s perfect facade never slips. She is well versed in the coded vernacular of society. Her Facebook page is full of shout-outs to the designers who dress her and posts about “what an honor it was” to perform for the president, to meet so-and-so, or to be accompanied by this or that pianist. “It was awfully nice having Mr. Trump sing Happy Birthday to me,” she wrote on Facebook at the time.
Standing in front of Abe, Basham began to twirl, careful not to slip on the slick terrace made of surf-polished stones that Mar-a-Lago’s original owner, the cereal fortune heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, collected from the shores of her Long Island hunting preserve. Her silvery evening gown glittered in the dim light. Almost precisely at mid-twirl, things began to change. A flurry of activity began at the president’s table. Something had happened. Something with North Korea. Basham tried to make her exit.
“Mr. President, I shouldn’t know this,” someone heard the performer say.
Trump shrugged.
“It’s just nukes,” the president said. “Sing us a song.”
Trump’s operatic priorities were quickly overruled. North Korea had launched a missile in the direction of Japan.
Basham retreated. Aides with laptops and sheets of paper converged on the table, using cell phones to illuminate the documents for Trump and Abe. The president got on a phone — possibly his unsecure Android that he had tweeted from before the dinner. “Wow ... the center of the action!!!” DeAgazio wrote on Facebook. Press had not been allowed into the dinner, so DeAgazio and others on the terrace posted photos and reported what they saw. “Trump and Abe will delivery [sicJ joint statement soon about North Korea Missile,” longtime member Guido Lombardi tweeted from his nearby table, along with a photo of Trump and Abe.
Behind the scenes Mar-a-Lago was chaos. “All of a sudden, when you see people running around, you think, ‘Oh shit, something’s happening,”’ said a club staffer. White House staff scurried to outfit the Gold and White Ballroom with flags and an appropriately presidential blue curtain so that the leaders could hold a press conference.
Within about ten minutes of the calls interrupting their dinner, the two grim-faced leaders walked past Lombardi’s table to get a briefing on the North Korean missile test and face the cameras.
“North Korea’s most recent missile launch is absolutely intolerable,” Abe said in Japanese. “During the summit meeting that I had with President Trump, he assured me that the United States will always be with Japan 100 percent. And to demonstrate his determination as well as commitment, he is now here with me at this joint press conference.”
Trump stood stiff armed, off to the side, wearing his resting pout face until it was his turn to speak. He said very little.
“I just want everybody to understand and fully know that the United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100 percent,” Trump said, giving the classic “okay” sign with his fingers. “Thank you.”
After the press conference Trump stopped by the wedding, where he delivered an impromptu toast — “You really are a special, beautiful couple,” the president said — and then went back to the terrace to continue mingling with his guests. Some members expressed their awe at how he handled the situation, even celebrating Trump’s apparent transparency with concerns of national security.
“He chooses to be out on the terrace, with the members. It just shows that he’s a man of the people,” DeAgazio said to the Washington Post.
Much of the rest of the world was horrified.
Sean Spicer spent the next several days trying to explain away what had happened in front of the diners at Mar-a-Lago. No classified information had been discussed, Spicer assured the press gaggle.
“Apparently there was a photo taken, which everyone jumped to nefarious conclusions about what may or may not be discussed,” he said, in reference to DeAgazio’s Facebook posts, which had been subsequently deleted. According to Spicer, Trump and Abe had already been briefed in a secure room set up at Mar-a-Lago before dinner and then again after. The discussion at the table was just about logistics for the press conference, he said.
Despite the national media blasting DeAgazio, he said he faced no repercussions from the club for his social media posts. “Quite the contrary,” he said. “I was welcomed enthusiastically.” He added that he was wrong about a briefing taking place on the terrace and parroted Spicer’s explanation that the nation’s security had never been in jeopardy.
Many members brushed off the whole thing as no big deal.
“We really didn’t see anything. We saw people came over with a piece of paper, and the translator was reading something. But we didn’t see anything,” said Varga, the crystal merchant. “Anybody who tells you that they knew what was going on is lying. They didn’t know anything.”
While the terrace was probably too noisy for guests to hear anything, the abundance of unsecured cell phones connected to the club’s public WiFi network alarmed national security experts. Then-White House chief of staff John Kelly would ban personal cell phones from the West Wing, although no such prohibition was put in place at Mar-a-Lago. (Trump, who stills talks about TiVo like it’s a new technology, considers security precautions on his own cell phone “too inconvenient.”)
The president did not seem to grasp the weight of the situation.
“It was a party for him. It worried me,” said one Mar-a-Lago employee. “I thought I was in the twilight zone.”
Behind the scenes the club took the smallest of steps to improve security.
Future dinners with foreign leaders would be held in the Gold and White Ballroom — away from the prying eyes of other patrons.
And the club imposed a “no photos” rule when the president was around, though it was almost impossible to enforce at larger galas — and there was a general exception for selfies.
When John Havlicek, an eight-time NBA champion with the Boston Celtics, celebrated his birthday at Mar-a-Lago, his adult son tried to take a cell phone photo of the birthday cake. Immediately one of the club’s private security guards intervened.
According to Palm Beach society columnist Shannon Donnelly, the guard snatched the phone out of Havlicek’s son’s hand and walked away, shouting, “No photos. The president is entitled to his privacy.”
“The people at surrounding tables began booing and shouting their objections at the security guard,” Donnelly recounted, ”but Havlicek just sort of gave a quiet ‘no big deal; everybody stay cool’ gesture to the crowd and went back to blowing out the candles.”
Regardless of the tougher rules, a fundamental tension remained. The Winter White House is a club, one that the president depends on for part of his wealth. The club exists to serve its members. And the club members like to take pictures.
As a club owner, Trump knew what he was doing. His personality and easygoing presence were a big hit. But when it came to national security, it was pretty clear he didn’t have a clue.
In response to what the Post called Trump and Abe’s “al fresco situation room,” Chelsea Clinton posted the thought that undoubtedly kept many FBI agents up at night: “How many of Mar-a-Lago’s new members will be (already are?) members of foreign intelligence agencies & media organizations?”
Pre-order your copy of ‘The Grifter’s Club,’ out Aug. 4: https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/sarah-blaskey/the-grifters-club/9781541756960/.
This story was originally published July 30, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
