Along the Atlantic Intra-Coastal Waterway in Palm Beach, Florida, the sea is choppy on a breezy and clammy November morning.
There’s a police car parked at the entrance to the bridge leading across to Mar-a-Lago, the landmark resort built a century ago for businesswoman Marjorie Merriweather Post, and another one outside the gate into the 17-acre estate.
“Once you get to the end of the bridge, you’ve got to come back,” a police officer says curtly.
Mar-a-Lago was bequeathed to the National Park Service on Post’s death in 1973. She had hoped it could be used as a location for state visits or as a presidential retreat. But due to upkeep costs and difficulties securing the site, it was returned to her family’s foundation in the early 1980s and sold to businessman Donald Trump in 1985.
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Post’s wish for her home to become a presidential bolt-hole came true, in a way, with Trump a regular visitor during his four years in the White House to what is now an exclusive members’ only club.
Locals say security has increased since the Republican candidate was the target of what the FBI described as an attempted assassination at his West Palm Beach golf club, about 7km away, in September.
Mar-a-Lago stretches along the ocean front and another police vehicle was parked on a well-manicured lawn leading towards the water. A couple of hundred metres away, in car parks along the bridge, camera crews were jostling for position, attempting to get the resort’s recognisable clay mission tiled roofs into their shots.
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A day after Trump suggested during a rally that he wouldn’t mind if members of the “fake news” were shot, journalists from the US, Belgium, France, Poland, Greece, Mexico, China and elsewhere gathered near his home.
“I have this piece of glass here, but all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much,” the former president told a crowd in Pennsylvania.
Mr Trump, of course, had bigger fish to fry on Monday and was touring some of the swing states to make a last-gasp appeal to voters to turn out on Tuesday. The 78 year old, who is understandably looking a bit jaded at this stage of a long campaign, made appearances in Raleigh, North Carolina (10am Eastern Time); two in Pennsylvania (Reading at 2pm and Pittsburgh at 6pm); and rounded off the day in Grand Rapids, Michigan (10.30pm).
He is due back to cast a vote, presumably for himself, at the Morton and Barbara Mandel Recreation Centre in Palm Beach on Tuesday. He will hold an election watch-party at a nearby convention centre, where traffic lanes are already closed and satellite trucks are parked up.
Back on the bridge, a few performative Trump supporters coughed up what some members of the media were looking for, waving “Trump-Vance” signs at oncoming traffic, including a dumpster, and winning their fair share of honks. One of them, Rich, from nearby Delray Beach, insists Trump is going to win, and win big.
“It’s the only way. The public sees right through Kamala [Harris], she’s a phoney, a puppet.”
While walking around Palm Beach and the wider area, it is hard to credit that there’s an election going on. Posters, canvassers and people seeking to discuss politics are few and far between.
Annie, who is unlocking her bicycle, says everyone’s well aware of what’s happening and perhaps keen to leave talking about it until the dust starts to settle later in the week.
“It’s going to be hard to avoid it tomorrow night,” she says. “It’s nice to have a little peace.”
Ron, who’s carrying some coffees back to his office, says his acquaintances seem to be keeping their cards closer to their chest than in the past when anybody brings the election up.
“Nobody wants to start a fight,” he says. “But we could have a riot if one of them loses out.”
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