With former President Donald Trump escaping the Florida heat and temporarily residing at his New Jersey golf club for the summer, trips to Trump Tower are also part of his routine, according to The New York Times.
Trump, a native New Yorker whose business relationships have long been rooted in Manhattan, reportedly commutes from Bedminster to the city “at least once a week,” and comes back and forth “without attracting much attention,” according to The Times.
When Trump descended from an escalator into the lobby of Trump Tower to announce the launch of his successful 2016 presidential campaign, the building accentuated his burgeoning political power to the world.
However, after a tumultuous term in office and a failed reelection campaign last year, the mood is decidedly different in Trump’s longtime business hub.
Many of Trump’s longtime employees are no longer at the company and family members who once worked with the former president in Manhattan are in different locales.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, was once of fixture of the building but has become one of the former president’s highest-profile critics after being investigated and convicted of tax evasion and campaign finance violations.
According to The Times, the former president works “mostly alone” in his Trump Tower office, with two assistants and a small amount of body men.
Read more: We identified the 125 people and institutions most responsible for Donald Trump’s rise to power and his norm-busting behavior that tested the boundaries of the US government and its institutions
The report also notes that Trump’s political operation has “dwindled to a ragtag team of former advisers who are still on his payroll,” similar to the group that helped him win in 2016.
However, according to The Times, “most of them go days or weeks without interacting with Trump in person.”
As Insider’s Tom LoBianco reported last month, the former president is also “filling his days with endless rounds of golf and emailed tirades against enemies.”
With control of the Republican Party still in his minds, Trump continues to issue political endorsements for allies as he mulls a potential 2024 presidential campaign.
The former president is seemingly downplaying his serious legal woes — New York prosecutors recently convened a grand jury to investigate whether the Trump organization committed financial crimes and the New York attorney general’s office is also conducting criminal investigations into the organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg.
“This is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history,” Trump said in a statement last month. “It began the day I came down the escalator in Trump Tower, and it’s never stopped. They wasted two years and $48 million in taxpayer dollars on Mueller and Russia Russia Russia, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and it continues to this day, with illegally leaked confidential information.”
Read next
Listen to The Refresh, Insider’s real-time news show
Listen to The Refresh, Insider’s real-time news show