“Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in May, summing up his 25-year history here. “The money I took out of there was incredible.”
Absolute must reading today, How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions, an informative, grimy and not at all shocking story of how Drumpf built casinos, mismanaged them, took piles of money and stuck the debt on the poor people who lent him money in the first place as well as subcontractors, suppliers and anyone else who was unfortunate enough to cross his business path.
His audacious personality and opulent properties brought attention — and countless players — to Atlantic City as it sought to overtake Las Vegas as the country’s gambling capital. But a close examination of regulatory reviews, court records and security filings by The New York Times leaves little doubt that Mr. Trump’s casino business was a protracted failure. Though he now says his casinos were overtaken by the same tidal wave that eventually slammed this seaside city’s gambling industry, in reality he was failing in Atlantic City long before Atlantic City itself was failing.
But even as his companies did poorly, Mr. Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen.
He bragged about his bankruptcies at the GOP debates; he was just being “a good businessman” getting the best deals he could. As a matter of fact, ask him about anything negative he has ever done, and comes the refrain “sure, I’m a businessman.” And what a businessman.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Mr. Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
Must have been a tough time for him, eh?
All the while, Mr. Trump received copious amounts for himself, with the help of a compliant board. In one instance, The Times found, Mr. Trump pulled more than $1 million from his failing public company, describing the transaction in securities filings in ways that may have been illegal, according to legal experts.
Of course, others weren't living so large.
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the hell out of here?’”
It’s an exhaustive article about a Slimebag di Tutti Slimebags. I expect the Presumptive Deadbeat to be making a statement about the lying New York Times, “a failing newspaper,” fairly soon. It should be required reading.