Trump walks in and out of rooms at Mar-a-Lago just to get applause because he loves the attention, a filmmaker who interviewed him there said

• Trump loves roaming around Mar-a-Lago to get attention, a filmmaker who interviewed him there said.
• Alex Holder told "The Bulwark Podcast" Trump dipped in and out of rooms for guests to applaud him.

Former President Donald Trump walks in and out of rooms at Mar-a-Lago just to receive applause from guests because he loves the attention, a British filmmaker who interviewed him there told "The Bulwark Podcast."

"What Trump does in Mar-a-Lago and why he loves it there so much is that he just walks around where people are having dinner just to get a round of applause," filmmaker Alex Holder told "The Bulwark Podcast" in an episode that aired on Tuesday.

"So he will just walk into the dinner area ... there will be a cheer, and then he will go out, and then he'll go back in again, and go out," Holder added. "He just loves that admiration."

Holder interviewed the former president at Mar-a-Lago in March 2021 as part of his documentary, "Unprecedented." The series portrays the Trump family before, during, and after the 2020 presidential election.

The filmmaker had also interviewed Trump once in the White House on December 7, 2020, and once at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in May 2021.

In the podcast, Holder described the former president as a "simple, but very unusual" man, who has an "inability to understand why people don't like him unless he doesn't like them first."

"That is the world he lives in. He is incapable of understanding anything other than total and absolute admiration towards him," Holder said, adding that it was these qualities that made it "frustrating" to interview Trump.

"You could never go deep with him," he said.

Trump has hosted opulent parties, political speeches, and fundraisers at his Mar-a-Lago estate since he bought the sprawling property for $8 million in 1985.

He turned Mar-a-Lago into a private club ten years later, and now charges members an annual fee of $14,000, with an additional $2,000 dining minimum.

Earlier this month the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago and seized about 20 boxes' worth of material from the estate, including 11 sets marked as classified.