Trump, with wife Melania last month at Mar-a-Lago (Michael Price/Special to Page2Live)

Mar-a-Lago owner Donald Trump called for Chinese products entering the United States to be heavily taxed.

His words on CNNMoney.com this morning, however, weren’t so diplomatic.

Click here for the video

The part-time Palm Beacher and star of NBC’s The Apprentice told CNN his acquaintances in China make fun of us.

The developer explained how the Chinese sell us their products at tremendous profits because they’re virtually untaxed, then loan that money back to the United States by buying treasury bonds.

“I think that’s terrible,” Trump tells Poppy Harlow. “Look, I know lots of folks in China. They think we’re the dumbest sons-of-bitches in the world, all right. They think our representatives don’t know what they’re doing. They laugh at us behind our back. I’d tax China very, very heavily.”

Makes sense!

– Click here for the bird’s eye view of Mar-a-Lago

O'Reilly addresses fans Friday night at Mar-a-Lago (Click on the Mike Price photo for more on the event)

Fox News superstar Bill O’Reilly, the non-nonsense host of the top-rated The O’Reilly Factor, preached to the converted Friday night at Palm Beach’s Mar-a-Lago.

Click here for all the photos

In his “State of the Union” talk, the conservative host blasted liberal rival MSNBC, calling it “little” because “eight people watch it.”

Comparing the White House to the Chicago mob, O’Reilly said he hopes for low approval ratings for Pres. Barack Obama because, when that happens, The Factor’s ratings go up.

And he predicted that Republican Mitt Romney would take on Obama in the 2012 presidential elections, with Sarah Palin’s third party candidate siphoning votes from Obama.

But O’Reilly, 60, didn’t really come to talk politics. He came to help shine the limelight on a newbie on Palm Beach’s charity landscape: the It Happened to Alexa Foundation. And it worked. About 400 people paid up to $600 for a photo with O’Reilly, his speech and a steak dinner.

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

Philanthropist Patrick Park dug deep in his legendary wine collection, and some of his world-class bottles went up for auction Thursday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.

The bottles of rare Chateau Lafite, Mouton-Rothschild and Chateau Margaux brought in thousands, although organizers were still counting the loot late Thursday. And it was all for charity: National Enquirer heiress Lois Pope’s Disabled Veterans LIFE Memorial Foundation. Pope is raising money to build a memorial to wounded warriors in Washington, D.C.

Check out Page2Live’s gallery by Michael Price by clicking here, or on the photo below:

Wine consultant Dennis Foley shows off a bottle of Staglin Family Cabernet Thursday night at Mar-a-Lago (Click on the photo for more)

– Want more? Check this out, from the wine-drinking Swirl Girls at pbpulse!

Man, things must be slow these days in kiwi land!

The national lottery of New Zealand is putting out a new game called Trump Up Your Life.

Trump, as in The Apprentice’s Donald Trump!

The New Zealand winner, announced later this month, will get $100,000 plus a trip to NYC with an entourage of three.

According to several of New Zealand’s newspapers, the lottery will also throw in top-flight luggage, a six-night stay at the soon-to-be-openTrump SoHo, $10,000 per person for petty cash, a round of golf at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, a chauffeur-driven limo on-call and a meet-and-greet with the owner of Palm Beach’s Mar-a-Lago.

Trump is reported to have gotten a few bucks for his participation but it’s unclear how much!

Donald Trump and Geri Morrow at the Jan. 15 gala. (Click on the photo for more)

Tensions at Alzheimer’s Community Care.

The popular chairs of the non-profit’s yearly Palm Beach gala, Frank and Geri Morrow, resigned last week after they were told that they’d have to have all features of future events approved by the group’s full-time staff.

Usually, the chair of Palm Beach galas exert tremendous control. They pick the entertainment, decorations, menus and the seating arrangements with little, or no, staff involvement. And attendance depends on a chair’s popularity.

“We resigned when they told us we’d have to get everything approved,” Frank Morrow said. “They are not really giving us a reasons why the policy changed. This year’s event (click here) was very successful.

“But one thing that (CEO) Mary Barnes indicated is that she thinks the gala had become ‘too societal,’ too much of a party and not enough of a fund-raiser. Well, if they want full control, now they’ve got it.”

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

Welcome to the fifth annual Caron Renaissance gala! (Click on the photo for Michael Price's gallery)

Petra Levin, the chairwoman of Friday’s fifth annual Caron Renaissance gala, said the economy forced her to think outside the box.

How would she attract people to Palm Beach’s Mar-a-Lago willing to pay between $1,000 and $500 for a charity dinner on one of the busiest gala weekends of the year?

“I figured I’d make it less formal than the average Palm Beach gala, and more laid back,” Levin, a former Miss Germany, said during Friday’s wingding.”I thought that’d bring back the husbands, who no longer like the pomp and circumstance by the middle of the season.”

And then, she reached out to Miami singer Jon Secada, who performed for a hour.

Result: Levin had 300-plus helping themselves to fine foods around the pool, then moving to the grand ballroom for Secada’s show.

And by the time the receipts were tallied, the Boca addiction treatment center Caron Renaissance was $1 million richer — money that’ll go mostly to pay for rehab for those who can’t afford it.

Check out the guests by clicking here or on the photo.

Melania Trump and Petra Levin, co-chairs of the Heart Ball (Michael Price/Special to Page2Live) Click on the photo for more

The Heart Ball, which benefits the American Heart Association, is one of the biggest charity galas of the Palm Beach season. More than 500 guests attended the shindig at Mar-a-Lago, Saturday night. Donald Trump arrived with wife Melania, who was co-chair with socialite Petra Levin. It was one of the first times this season that the Trumps were together. This, a week after stories started to spring up that there’s trouble in their marital paradise. Still, the ball was tremendously successful, raising a whopping $1.5 million in one night. Check out the Michael Price’s gallery by clicking on the photo, or here.

Trump at the convention center Saturday (Special to Page2Live)

With rumors swirling that there’s unhappiness in his marriage to model Melania, something he forcefully denies, Mar-a-Lago owner Donald Trump spent Saturday afternoon shopping for St. Valentine’s Day at the Palm Beach Jewelry Art and Antique Show. The event, at the convention center downtown WPB, ends tonight. I’m told The Donald, who looked like a vulgar tourist, hovered quite a bit near the Sherry Sheaf Private Jewelers booth and eyed a 46-carat aquamarine necklace and pendant circled by 5.45 carats of diamonds (see below). The star of The Apprentice didn’t buy it (Boooo!) but promised he’d be back today.

There was a plethora of well-known locals poolside at Mar-a-Lago Saturday night, for the preview of the upcoming Heart Ball, also at Donald Trump’s private club.

Philanthropist Patrick Park, honorary chair of the Valentine’s Day affair, whet the appetites of about 225 would-be Heart Ball guests with cocktails and a Michael Kors/GRAFF fashion show.

And judging from those gawking at jet-setting fashionista Kors’ models, including a couple of billionaires, it seems a given that the American Heart Association will get close to the 2008 record take for a Palm Beach party, $2.38 million.

Michael Kors' model get ready to show off their wares Saturday night at Mar-a-Lago (Michele Sandberg/Special to Page2Live)

Seen along the impromptu catwalk: corporate raider Wilbur Ross and wife Hilary; Netscape founder Jim Clark, who set aside his dislike of Palm Beach society to take his much-younger bride, Australian model Kristy Hinze Clark to the party; beer mogul Stephen Levin and his wife, former Miss Germany Petra Levin; TV host Regis Philbin and wife Joy; and more.

Check out Michele Sandberg’s gallery by clicking here, or click on the photo.

Hoping to raise more than $600,000 in what’s becoming one of the social season’s must-be-seen-at rendez-vous, more than 500 people jam-packed the Alzheimer’s Community Care black-tie gala Friday night in Palm Beach’s Mar-a-Lago.

The event showed signs that there’s light at the end of the tunnel for area non-profits, whose budgets for big deal fundraisers have been stretched thin.

The Alzheimer’s entertainment ( salsa demonstrations), decorations, food (including lobster and a salad named after Mar-a-Lago owner Donald Trump), drinks and the atmosphere all looked and felt “pre-Madoff,” when it wasn’t rare for a charity to spend $300,000-$500,000 on such things.

“We didn’t order fresh flowers,” said gala Chairwoman Geri Morrow. “But for everything else, we went all out.”

Alzheimer’s Community Care is a West Palm Beach organization that provides care to patients and caretakers dealing with the debilitating disease.

Check out Michele Sandberg’s 68-photo gallery of the fiesta by clicking here or on the photo.