At Donald Trump’s departure ceremony Wednesday, Donald Trump Jr., looked stricken and teary-eyed, while his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, briefly turned away from the camera, as if she didn’t want to be filmed sobbing.
With the end of Trump’s presidency, the “prom king and queen of MAGA-land” face a challenging future, including the news that they are not wanted by many residents in the exclusive Jupiter, Florida gated community, where they are looking to buy two luxury homes.
According to the Palm Beach Post, residents in Admirals Cove haven’t been happy to learn that the couple are seeking to buy two adjacent lots in the waterfront neighborhood. About 30 residents of the community in Jupiter, 20 miles north of Palm Beach, contacted the homeowners’ association to express their concerns.
“About half have concerns about safety,” said Peter Moore, general manager of the property owners association, told the Palm Beach Post “The others have political concerns with what’s happened in the last couple of weeks.”
One resident went so far to say in a neighborhood email thread that the couple’s presence in Admirals Cove would be “a nightmare,” the Palm Beach Post reported. The Daily Show had this to say about photos of the tearful couple at Trump’s departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews:
When you experience a consequence pic.twitter.com/BDC5jAlyRi
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 20, 2021
The last couple of weeks saw Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host, join then President Trump on stage at a pro-Trump rally near the White House on Jan. 6, where they helped push his false claims of election fraud and urged his MAGA supporters to “fight” to overturn the results of Joe Biden’s victory.
There’s a dancing 💩 emoji!? #TheSeditionShuffle@kimguilfoyle @DonaldJTrumpJr pic.twitter.com/YCEkw8wWjZ
— Michael Ⓜ️ (@michaelschweitz) January 7, 2021
Within hours, the crowd had turned into a violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol, engaged in deadly clashes with police and threatened to hang Vice President Mike Pence.
Even before the Jan. 6 insurrection, which led to Trump being impeached for a historic second time, Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle began house-hunting in Florida because they knew they couldn’t return to New York City after Trump left the White House, the New York Post reported. Like the former president, and other Trump family members, Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle have faced reports that they would “not be welcome” in the liberal social circles of Manhattan where Trump Jr. was once a prince in his father’s real estate empire and Guilfoyle a conservative media star.
Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle, the ex-wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, may have been wrong to assume that Florida would provide an automatic safe haven, even if its exclusive gated communities are populated by what the New York Post called “like-minded conservatives.”
One of the couple’s would-be Admirals Cove neighbor raised concerns about Trump Jr. reportedly being under criminal investigation for the Capitol siege, the Palm Beach Post reported. The resident, in a letter to the homeowners board, also brought up a report in the New Yorker that suggested that Guifoyle had to leave Fox News in the summer of 2018 because of sexual harassment allegations made by a former assistant.
Because of Trump Jr’s actions before the Capitol siege and Guilfoyle’s alleged workplace improprieties at Fox News, the Admirals Cove resident wrote: “I believe their membership would bring undesirable notoriety to the club, harm our reputation and have the potential for creating disharmony.”
The hostility toward the couple is not “universal” in Admirals Cove, the Palm Beach Post reported. One resident said she didn’t like to see efforts to block anyone from owning a home in the community, including Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle.
“We don’t want this to be a community that makes those kinds of judgments,” resident Terri Ameen told the Palm Beach Post. “I don’t see a problem. We have to be more accepting.”
Trump and his family, including Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle, skipped Biden’s inauguration Wednesday and flew on Air Force One for the last time. The family arrived in Florida and headed to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach about an hour before Biden was to take the oath of office at the U.S. Capitol.
The ex-president also faces hostility from some of his Florida neighbors.
“Nobody that I’ve spoken to is looking forward to him coming back to Palm Beach,” Richard J. Steinberg, a real estate broker who works in Palm Beach and New York, told the New York Times. “Quite honestly, I think that whether you’re a Trump supporter or not, I don’t think that there are many people that in good conscience can justify what happened on Jan. 6, and I think that most — most — people hold him at least partially responsible.”
A group of anonymous neighbors, calling themselves The Palm Beach Committee, also wrote a letter saying they don’t want Trump as a neighbor because he “breaks laws” and could draw crowds of “Proud Boys, Skin Heads (and) Neo Nazi Crazies.”
Lawyers in the area also are pushing Palm Beach city officials to enforce an agreement Trump signed decades ago, which says he can’t live full-time at Mar-a-Lago — designated a resort, not a private residence — for more than seven consecutive days, and a total of 21 days in a year.
Perhaps because of this agreement, Melania Trump has been house-hunting in the area, including in Jupiter, the New York Times reported this week. At the start of the New Year, though in “a state of shock” after her husband’s loss in the Nov. 3 election, Melania Trump began a new home search that is ongoing.
Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have reportedly purchased a $30 million plot of land on the exclusive island of Indian Creek, north of Miami, where they hope to build a new mansion. They are renting an apartment in Miami to live in while their home is built, the New York Times also reported. Tiffany Trump also was looking to buy a house or a condo in Miami, Page Six said.
For Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle, Jupiter seemed to offer an ideal location to rebuild their lives after losing their proximity to White House power and as their MAGA political brand appears to have lost crucial support from the Proud Boys and QAnon, who were dismayed by Trump’s failure to stay in power, according to the New York Times and Politico.
Jupiter may still be Trump country. More than 57 percent of its residents voted for Trump in the Nov. 3 election, Meanwhile, Trump Jr.’s ex-wife ,Vanessa Trump, lives in the nearby Jupiter Country Club with their five children, and the town is home to another of the family’s Trump-branded golf courses, the Trump National Golf Club Jupiter.
The Palm Beach Post said the couple, together, plan to buy a seven-bedroom home in Admirals Cove that’s listed for $11 million, while Guilfoyle, on her own, plans to buy the six-bedroom home next door that’s listed for $9.5 million. Purchasing a home in Admirals Cove guarantees them membership in the community’s country club.
Admirals Cove also was the site of a pro-Trump Labor Day boat parade, attended by Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle attended and organized by a resident, conservative commentator Carlos Gavidia, the Palm Beach Post said.
Gavidia’s Trump fervor turned ugly when he got into a verbal altercation in the club’s cafe that led to him being arrested on a felony charge of threatening to kill or do bodily injury. Gavidia has since moved out of the community, meaning Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle lost at least one neighbor who would be sure to invite them to dinner parties.
This story has been updated to include a tweet from “The Daily Show.”
