Former President Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C., was once busy and bustling with top Republicans and other political figures but has reportedly turned into a “dead zone” since he left office and moved to Florida.
The Daily Mail reported that the lobby at Trump’s International Hotel in the nation’s capital had been bustling with powerful people and allies of the president while he was still in the White House, peaking in activity around the time of the Republican National Convention last summer. This week, there were only scattered guests and just one table seated at the upscale restaurant on an upper floor, the report noted.
The outlet added that with Trump gone and the possibility of a chance encounter with the president no longer a reality, the hotel seems to have lost its appeal.
“Gone were fixtures of the Trump hotel: no Rudy Giuliani, no cabinet secretaries, no Republican congressman, no White House aides, no Trump children or in-laws, and no chance of an encounter with the president and his entourage,” the report noted.
The newspaper published a series of photos showing the mostly empty lobby, with only scattered people including few at the once-crowded bar.
There had already been indications that Trump’s business empire faced significant obstacles once he left the White House. As The Inquisitr reported, longtime financial partner Deutsche Bank AG had planned to cut ties after his term was over, leaving Trump on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in active loans. According to Reuters , the lender had grown weary of the bad publicity that came with the scandal-prone commander-in-chief and would be coming to collect the roughly $340 million in outstanding debt from the Trump Organization. The outlet added that the bank could ultimately seize some of the company’s real estate assets if it was unable to pay in full.
There were other factors contributing to the apparent downturn in business at the former president’s Washington hotel, the Daily Mail reported. The newspaper noted that the restaurant had been closed for the last month due to COVID-19 restrictions, which hampered business even further. Nationwide travel restrictions have also impacted the lodging industry nationwide, with many events that would normally draw people to the nation’s capital on hold.
Once Joe Biden was sworn in as president, Trump moved out of the nation’s capital and into his luxury Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he had spent a considerable amount of time during his four years in office.
