Trump pitches his Florida golf club as a future "presidential retreat"

President Trump said Wednesday that he wants to convert his private golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, into a permanent presidential retreat, describing it as "sort of a Camp David" that his successors could use for decades after he leaves office. The remark, made during an unrelated Oval Office event, is the first time Trump himself has publicly endorsed a proposal his attorney quietly floated to Palm Beach County officials last month.

The plan would designate Trump International Golf Club, which the Trump Organization owns but operates on land leased from the county, as a "U.S. Presidential Golf Course" available to sitting and former presidents of both parties, as well as visiting foreign heads of state. It is the latest instance of Trump seeking to leave a physical and institutional mark on the presidency, following a Rose Garden-adjacent ballroom, a renovated Kennedy Center and a planned triumphal arch, and it has revived long-running questions about how closely his private business interests are intertwined with the office he holds.

A pitch delivered in the Oval Office

"It's a great idea, and it'll be used a lot," Trump told reporters, adding that the idea originated with the Secret Service. "It seems that all presidents play golf." He ran through what he described as the property's security advantages — its distance from tall buildings and dense residential blocks, and its proximity to Palm Beach International Airport — without mentioning that the same course was the site of a 2024 assassination attempt against him. A Secret Service agent spotted an armed man along the club's tree line while Trump was golfing during a break in his campaign; the man, Ryan Routh, was later convicted on federal charges and sentenced in February to life in prison plus seven years.

The proposal itself surfaced before Trump's remarks. In a letter sent to county commissioners last month, attorney Harvey Oyer III wrote that the club would fund construction of a dedicated presidential lodging facility and then provide free access to the federal government, working with the General Services Administration and Secret Service on the design. "Just as Camp David, Windsor Castle, or the Elysée Palace are known worldwide, so too will the Presidential Golf Course in Palm Beach County," Oyer's letter said.

The numbers behind the pitch

The scale of Trump's golf business has grown sharply since he returned to office. The West Palm Beach club alone brought in nearly $37 million in revenue during his first year back in office, according to the annual financial disclosure the U.S. Office of Government Ethics received this year. Watchdog groups that track Trump's business dealings have separately documented 49 visits by Trump to that course in the same period — second only to his 76 trips to nearby Mar-a-Lago — as part of a broader accounting of his conflicts of interest compiled by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Those figures underline why a county-blessed, federally used "presidential" designation would carry real financial weight for the Trump Organization, even as Oyer's letter frames the arrangement as a gift with no cost to the government. Trump will not benefit personally from the finished retreat, the letter notes, since "President Trump will be out of office before this proposed project could be completed."

"Just as Camp David, Windsor Castle, or the Elysée Palace are known worldwide, so too will the Presidential Golf Course in Palm Beach County."

A lease, an airport and a county caught in the middle

The arrangement's mechanics run through Palm Beach County government rather than the White House. Trump International Golf Club sits on land the county leases to the club near Palm Beach International Airport, the product of a settlement reached after Trump sued the county decades ago over airport noise. Any formal redesignation or construction of new federal-use facilities on that land would likely require sign-off from the Board of County Commissioners, not simply an agreement between Trump's attorneys and the Secret Service.

County Administrator Joseph Abruzzo has so far been the only county official to comment publicly, calling the proposal a "remarkable and historic opportunity" that "likely would further cement Palm Beach County's place on the national and international stage for generations to come." He said county staff would examine the idea under direction from the commission and would coordinate with Trump's team and "appropriate federal agencies," but he did not commit the county to any particular outcome or timeline.

Past presidents have occasionally donated land for public or institutional use — Dwight Eisenhower gave his Gettysburg farm to the National Park Service, and Franklin Roosevelt donated part of his Hyde Park estate — precedents Oyer's letter cites directly. Those transfers, however, involved presidents giving away personal property outright rather than a sitting president's company retaining ownership while seeking a quasi-official government designation.

Reaction, and an open question over conflicts

Trump has used Camp David, the government-owned Maryland retreat built for that purpose since the Franklin Roosevelt administration, far less than most of his predecessors, often choosing his own properties in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia instead. He has described the rustic Catoctin Mountains compound as a place he would want to visit "for about 30 minutes." The West Palm Beach proposal would formalize that preference by building what amounts to a second official retreat inside one of his own clubs.

No ethics organization has yet issued a formal response to Wednesday's remarks specifically, and Trump's allies have framed the plan as a philanthropic gesture that would outlast his presidency and benefit future occupants of the office regardless of party. Critics of Trump's business arrangements have for years argued, including in CREW's recurring reports, that his properties function as venues where foreign officials, lobbyists and political donors can seek access to the administration, a dynamic a new federally endorsed golf course would not obviously resolve even if it carries no direct taxpayer cost.

What happens next

Palm Beach County has not scheduled a commission vote on the proposal, and Abruzzo's statement describes the review as preliminary. Any next step would likely involve commissioners weighing in publicly, followed by negotiations among the club, the GSA and the Secret Service over design, security standards and the terms under which the facility would be operated once built. The proposal is also part of a wider pattern: Trump has pursued a string of construction and renovation projects in Washington during his second term, from the Kennedy Center to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, that allies describe as a legacy effort and critics describe as blurring the line between the presidency and Trump's personal brand. The golf course proposal, unlike those federally funded projects, would be paid for privately — but it would still require a government body, the Palm Beach County Commission, to decide how far it wants to go in blessing a sitting president's business as a quasi-official institution.