The real reason Donald Trump abandoned Mar-a-Lago

| 9:09 am EDT May 21, 2021
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Just a week or two ago, numerous media pundits were pushing the silly false ratings-driven narrative that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis could somehow magically block Donald Trump from being extradited to New York. But now that Trump has packed up and relocated to New Jersey anyway, the pundits have abandoned the fictional narrative that remaining in Florida was somehow going to keep him from being arrested.

The thing is, this now raises the question of why he went to New Jersey. It almost certainly has nothing to do with his inevitable arrest. Federal law and court ruling make clear that there’s no such thing as blocking extradition across state lines. So wherever Trump is in the U.S. at the time New York indicts him, he’ll be arrested and shipped back to New York, and that’ll be that. But why leave Mar-a-Lago?

Here’s the thing about South Florida: it’s highly seasonal. A whole crop of seasonal residents called “snowbirds” pack up and head to South Florida for the winter months, and then head back to the northeast for the summer. Local businesses tend to plan around these seasons.

Mar-a-Lago is no different. Plenty of its members are surely snowbirds who simply aren’t in town during the summer months. So with Mar-a-Lago shutting down for the summer anyway, it makes more sense from a cost standpoint for Trump to relocate to a property that’s booming this time of year, such as his golf property in New Jersey.

That’s not the most exciting or controversial explanation, but it’s the most logically sound one, if a mundane one. There are a couple important takeaways, however. Given that Trump is now bragging about having finally secured his first bank loan in quite awhile, it’s clear that he’s in a tight financial spot. Even if he wanted to remain at Mar-a-Lago while it’s closed to members for the summer, he probably couldn’t afford to. Second, it’s clear that even Trump understands that being located in one state and not another state isn’t going to magically save him from being extradited to New York once he’s indicted.