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An anecdote about Donald Trump and his outsized U.S. flag and pole neatly encapsulated what so many people found either most appealing or most distasteful about the business magnate and 2016 Republican presidential candidate: to some he was the no-nonsense take-charge type who had the power and influence to thwart those who would insist on allowing the enforcement of petty rules or political correctness impede the progress of business and the course of making America great again; to others he was a wealthy blowhard who thought the rules didn't apply to him and habitually bullied others into submission to feed his lust for self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment: The basic facts are these: In 1985, Donald Trump paid $10 million for Mar-A-Lago, the name of the Marjorie Merriweather Post estate in Palm Beach, Florida. On 3 October 2006, Trump had an outsized American flag (variously described as being either 15x25 feet or 20x30 feet) installed on an 80-foot-high flagpole at Mar-a-Lago, in violation of local zoning regulations that established a maximum size of 4x6 feet for flags and a maximum height of 42 feet for flagpoles. Trump put up his regulation-violating flag and pole without obtaining either a building permit permit or a variance from local authorities, and the Palm Beach town council accordingly fined him $1,250 (or, in some accounts, $250) for every day the flag remained in place (apparently citing him only for the pole but not the flag itself). Trump in turn filed a $25 million lawsuit against Palm Beach, claiming that the town was selectively enforcing its rules (by not fining other properties that were flying flags in violation of town ordinances) and infringing his constitutional right to free speech. Six months later the two sides finally reached an agreement during secret, court-ordered negotiations, with the town agreeing to waive all fines against Trump for his code-busting flagpole and to review its ordinances and codes dealing with flagpoles and flags during the next zoning season, and Trump agreeing to drop his lawsuit, lower the height of his flagpole from 80 to 70 feet, obtain a permit for the pole and move it farther inland, and donate $100,000 to charities dealing with Iraq War Veterans, [the] American Flag, or the local VA hospital. So, the anecdote reproduced above is true in its broad strokes, although all of the numbers it cites (dollar amounts and dimensions) are inaccurate, the issue was resolved via court-ordered mediation (not by Trump's proposing a solution), and the money Trump agreed to donate to settle the matter went to organizations selected by both sides (although Trump had previously stated that if he won his 15x25 feet or $25 million lawsuit, the proceeds would go to military members returning from Iraq). However, the New York state attorney general later sued Trump for paying the fine through his nonprofit Donald J. Trump Foundation instead of from his personal finances: We also haven't been able to verify whether Trump connived to maintain (or even exceed) the height of the original pole by installing a 10-foot-shorter pole on a 20-foot-high hill — pictures of the estate show the flagpole rising from a mound, but the height of the mound is difficult to estimate from photographs: Trump's lawsuit maintained that he couldn't bring his flag and pole into compliance with regulations because A smaller flag and pole on Mar-A-Lago's property would be lost given its massive size, look silly instead of make a statement, and most importantly would fail to appropriately express the magnitude of Donald J. Trump's and the Club's members' patriotism. In his statements to the news media at the time he typically framed the issue as being one of his standing up to anti-American, anti-flag, anti-patriotic forces, while acknowledging that he hadn't even bothered applying for a permit first (because he didn't think he'd get one) and stating that he didn't believe rules should apply to the American flag (and therefore to him in this instance): Long-time Palm Beach Post correspondent Frank Cerabino opined that the Palm Beach flag brouhaha had little or nothing to do with patriotism, but rather was part of a pattern of Trump's using lawsuits to bend local authorities to his will — dredging up excuses to sue them for exorbitant amounts of money, then offering to drop the suits in exchange for agreements that provide him with significant business advantages: This wasn't the only instance of flagpole bickering in Trump's past. He also reached a (non-court) settlement with local government in 2014 after having raised Old Glory on a 70-foot flagpole at the Trump National Golf Course in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, without obtaining a permit first:
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