Trump's gamble: A failed bet in Atlantic City

What Trump built in Atlantic City was a Potemkin village, a façade that looks great on the front but behind which there is no substance, all there was was Donald Trump's smile and a lot of unaffordable debt and that combination It did not mean that Atlantic City had basically suffered since the 1950s from a declining tourism and vacation market, so something was needed on the state side to ensure Atlantic City's success. The people of New Jersey voted in 1976 to amend the Constitution and the first casino opened in 1978. Go see now it's open, it's not long after that Donald's interest develops, he starts flirting with Atlantic City and builds the square there, acquired the castle and then went into a phase of acquisition which is really what the Taj is.

It was unlike any other property in Atlantic City, the casino floor was about twice the size of a typical casino floor in Atlantic City and it was simply unheard of to have a property of that scale. Huge amounts of money were invested in the construction of the Taj. of millions of dollars, but Trump felt he could complete the ownership he promised to the casino Control Commission. It has all kinds of lines with banks. The main banks. A major bank. They put it in gloves for me. The money in my lap. You know, he made them believe in this transaction. was uniquely something he could finance, obviously, that's not exactly how it turned out that he ends up relying entirely on junk bonds.

A junk bond is rated so low that there is a high probability that you will not get your money back. There were six hundred and seventy-five million issued and many of the bonds were owned by small individuals, so small people who were not rich actually had a stake in that project, no matter where it was built, it was very difficult to get money from traditional sources, so then you know, junk bonds was the way you did it, kind of like what he said about bankruptcy, you used the laws of the land, the laws of the land, and I did it, it's the law of the country, I just took advantage, I think it's kind.

Same thing, you had all those people who were the Giants of the gaming industry coming to Atlantic City now, on top of that, you have the number one real estate developer in New York. What could be bad? How could this come out? wrong, this report was written in the summer of 1989. I was very concerned about the amount of debt that was accumulating on these properties. Debt service exceeded ninety-five million dollars a year. Those kinds of numbers made it necessary for that casino to generate a profit of more than a million dollars per day and no cathedral in the world has done that at that time in the historic meeting of showbiz and music bigwigs Magic Man and the tycoon led the media forum let's work from the Alexia world casino which The best area reminded me of money seeing the Taj Mahal at the time it opened was probably the largest casino in the world and it was certainly magnificent and for a short period time that new enthusiasm, the new emotion, the magic of everything was fantastic.

A sense of such excess and opulence was in every way an attempt to convey an empty wealth that turned out to be much emptier than Donald expected or than any of us saw coming in late 1990, less than a year later. opened could not generate the revenue necessary to finance the bonds that had built it, they simply could not pay the debt and, as a result, that led to new bankruptcy proceedings and, ultimately, Trump's loss of the facility. I have never gone bankrupt. by the way, I've never had more than a hundred Oh, be like me, that's your line, but the funny thing is, my bank ran out of money, huh, what am I saying?

He is right to say what he says on the campaign trail now that he didn't do it personally. go bankrupt, but that's only because he was too big to go bankrupt, the banks had to keep him alive and breathing and since then he has become a rich man by selling the name that was based on

failed

projects, things real ones that he built, where are they? When you talk about his legacy in Atlantic City, unfortunately, he is very ugly. If you look at his bankruptcy filings, for example, you can see page after page after page of small businesses in Atlantic City that were excited when he got you and would have built a statue. to him when he caught you but in the end it all ended with a debt that could never be paid