Four of the five Mar-a-Lago faced women on ‘Members Only’ are from Philly. Why are we watching this?

I’m embarrassed.

I drank in the glamorous high-pitched cattiness of Netflix’s soapy reality TV series Members Only: Palm Beach — starring four women with Philadelphia ties — like a bottomless carafe of mimosas, finishing the eight 45-minute episodes in less than two days.

Members Only debuted in the final days of 2025 on Netflix’s Top 10 list. It gives old school Housewives vibes and throws a spotlight on the women who live in and around President Donald Trump’s 20-acre oceanfront Mar-a-Lago estate.

The gaudy maxi dresses, overfilled lips, horrible lace front wigs, and the backstabbing. It’s all a hot mess.

Members Only is if Jersey Shore ran into a train wreck. But instead of getting caught up in the mean girl shenanigans of 20-somethings, I was gobsmacked by the ugly behavior of 50+ women behaving like petty middle schoolers in the name of preserving high society.

Former Bryn Mawr interior decorator and real estate mogul Hilary Musser, whose fifth wedding to a doorman is one of the ostentatious affairs featured, is the Queen Bee.

Philadelphians will remember Musser’s 2005 divorce from late billionaire Pete Musser, who she married in 1995 when she was 29 and he was pushing 70. (Some people are still talking about it.)

Musser now sells million dollar waterfront mansions in Palm Beach and it’s rumored she joined the rest of the relatively unknown cast to help sell her properties.

She holds steadfastly to Palm Beach’s strict dress codes. (It’s improper to show cleavage and leg in the same ensemble as a Palm Beach rule). Four-letter words offend her. Crying in public is a no-no. She’s only nice to New Yorker-turned wellness entrepreneur Taja Abitbol, partner of former MBA pitcher David Cohen and the only non-Philly affiliated woman in this core group.

The rest of the Philly-connected ladies smile in Musser’s face and grumble behind her haltered and tanned back.

They are: Maria Cozamanis, a DJ who moved from Philadelphia to Florida. As DJ Tumbles, she worked her way onto the Palm Beach society scene DJing lavish charity events at Mar-a-Lago. Roslyn Yellin is a former Bucks County Zumba teacher and grandmother with Cinderella ambitions. “My morals and values start at home with my family and husband,” she said in the first episode, as if reading from Vice President JD Vance’s family value cue cards.

And finally, there’s Yellin’s frenemy, Romina Ustayev, an Uzbeki immigrant and former home care business and fashion line owner in Philadelphia. She calls herself the Kim Kardashian of Palm Beach.

“I love going to Mar-a-Lago and being in the same room as the president and Elon Musk,” she said, near hysterically, in one episode. “You feel like, ‘Oh my God.” You’ve made it.

I knew going in that Members Only’s garish opulence and prettied up gluttony was a gold-trimmed Trump fever dream, one where he sits at the center of all things tacky, loud, expensive, and hurtful. (He never makes an appearance in the show, but his name is uttered several times in awe and admiration.)

But the moment Ustayev — an immigrant who is not quite as white as Trump’s favored Norwegian and Danish immigrants — stepped in, I knew I was watching the latest piece of Trump propaganda.

» READ MORE: White is the 2026 Pantone Color of the Year. They say the choice isn’t political.

Members Only is Trump’s ideal vision of America where obscene wealth is valued and the rest of America can eat cake.

Why is this show in our binging rotation now? Perhaps because Netflix is in the midst of finalizing a merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. The merger, which will give Netflix more than half the streaming market share, needs regulatory approval from the Trump administration.

Thanks to Members Only, the Mar-a-Lago face doesn’t just appear in the context of the White House. Think Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, their plump lips, and heavily Botoxed and made up faces.

Now we see these faces as we try to relax and binge-watch trash television. There is no escaping.

Members Only‘s arrival on Netflix is the next logical step to the White House’s messaging and shaping of America’s image. Trump started dismantling America’s diverse optics immediately after he took office and proceeded to remove photos of President Barack Obama from prominent places in the White House in an effort to erase evidence of the first Black president’s existence.

In advance of last Thanksgiving’s travel season, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy unveiled the Golden Age of Travel campaign, urging airline travelers to dress natty when flying. At the center of the campaign are black and white pictures of white travelers gussied up like the fictional Main Liners in Katharine Hepburn’s 1940 film Philadelphia Story.

And then last summer, Department of Homeland Security’s used Norman Rockwell’s paintings in its social media marketing. The images — denounced by Rockwell’s family — show mid 20th century suburban whites living a blissful white picket fence existence paired with the administration’s anti-immigration slogans “Protect our American way of life” and “DEFEND your culture.”

During a tense moment on the show, Ustayev shares with Yellin and her mentor, New York socialite and Palm Beach grand dame Gale Brophy, that Palm Beach society did not respect her culture, which includes asking for money at birthday parties and eating with her fingers. (Clutching my pearls.)

Brophy’s response: “Go back to your country.”

The inclusion of this kind of xenophobia into pop-culture is better than anything Fox News can drum up.

Johnny Gould, founder and president of Superluna Studios and the executive producer of Members Only, insists his show is not political.

He admitted Mar-a-lago is in the zeitgeist. “After all it is the winter White House,” he said. But he made Members Only because he was intrigued with Palm Beach society’s social hierarchy, one of the last in America.

The heart of Members Only, Gould said, is its “private club culture and B & T [Bath & Tennis] Boca Beach Resort, Breakers, and Mar-a-Lago [which] are at the center of social circles and drive societal rules and expectations,” Gould said. “That’s what connects these five ladies.”

The Philadelphia connection, Gould said, was a coincidence.

“I didn’t set out to make a show about Palm Beach featuring Philadelphia society women,” Gould said.

(Good thing, because except for Musser, some of the Philly’s ladies-who-lunch crowd say they have no idea who these women are, nor do they want to.)

“It was about the chemistry,” Gould continued. “For example, When I went to Hilary’s house and she came sweeping down the stairs in a beautiful gown on a Tuesday, immediately, I was intrigued.”

Everything else, Gould said, “fell into place.”

“[Member’s Only] is not about curing cancer,” he said. “It’s about pouring yourself a glass of wine [and taking] a really fun ride in a place that none of us will never have access to and a lifestyle none of us will get a chance to experience.”

That’s true.

Of course, these women don’t care about curing cancer. (Trump’s secretary of health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is shutting down clinical trials that are meant to find cancer treatments.)

The show wants to sell viewers an “aspirational” lifestyle in Trump’s image. And if he has his way, soon we will be living in a society where there will be even more haves and have nots, completely robbing the poor — and the middle class— of upward mobility.