Las Vegas Sun: How Trump Bankrupted His AC Casinos and Still Made Millions
The Las Vegas Sun featured a report Sunday morning on how the now shuttered Trump Plaza Casino and Hotel along with the recently sold Trump Marina Hotel and Casino brought in millions for GOP presumptive US Presidential nominee Donald Trump while hundreds of jobs were dissolved.
The same is true of the Trump Taj Mahal, now owned by the real estate magnate’s close friend and corporate raider Carl Icahn.
“Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me,” Trump said in an interview in May, summing up his 25-year history here. “The money I took out of there was incredible.”
From the Sun:
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 by The New York Times of regulatory reviews, court records and security filings leaves little doubt that 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, 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.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out, The Sun also noted.
