He Bankrupted His Casino. Now He's Bankrupting Our Country.
Throughout three presidential campaigns, people who’ve voted for Donald Trump have repeatedly said they’ve done so, in part, because he was a “successful businessman.”
Well, they’re half right.
He was a businessman alright, but if you'd been paying attention even a little bit at any time over the last forty-years, there were plenty of better-fitting adjectives to describe the kind kind of businessman he was: unscrupulous, irresponsible, incompetent, crooked—and failed.
In 1990, Trump launched the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, which cost over a billion dollars to construct. He called it the "eighth wonder of the world," and as he opened its doors he made the kind of wild, grandiose, pie-in-the-sky, too-good-to-be-true promises that became commonplace during the Presidential campaigns and are now status quo in his second presidency (as evidenced by his recent lie-riddled address to Congress).
Back in New Jersey all those years ago, he may as well have stood there and said he was going to Make Atlantic City Great Again.
The casino closed in 2016, by the way.
He ended up bankrupting it, not once but twice.
Trump actually filled for bankruptcy several times before becoming president the first time.
On nearly a half dozen occasions, he ran a billion-dollar endeavor into the ground, leaving in his wake thousands of devastated employees and unpaid creditors and then jumping ship without personal accountability of any kind. With each financial implosion, he's shielded himself and his family, leaving everyone else to clean up his mess.
A Fortune.com story once recounted that despite the Taj Mahal's abject financial failure, Trump personally profited during its demise, by doing things like selling Trump-branded water—making himself over eighty million dollars as the casino slowly collapsed, its vendors going unremunerated and its workers unceremoniously discarded.
Now, you might call all that being a successful businessman—or you might call it being a soulless parasite who feeds off things that were thriving, until those things are dead and then moving on. Potato—Potahto.
Regardless of the semantics, the bottom line remains unchanged: Trump is and has never been about making money for, improving the future of, or the lifting up of anyone but himself. He didn't give a damn about anyone associated with the Taj Maha and he doesn't give a damn about you thirty-five years later.
And this is the terrible history repeating itself right now.
Donald Trump has neither the capacity nor the intelligence nor the aspiration to lead this nation, to honor its Constitution, to represent its citizens.
He is not the least bit interested in people's healthcare or their educations or their golden years.
He couldn't care less about morality or virtue or Christianity.
He doesn't lose sleep over disabled veterans or unemployed factory workers or exhausted single mothers or suicidal gay teenagers.
He has no interest in dignity or decency or nobility befitting the Office—not because, as his supporters say he is a "straight-shooting Washington outsider" but because America is nothing but another host organism to him.
As always, he is here solely to slap his name on something and to suck it all dry, and if your eyes are open you can see that he is doing that right now with terrifying velocity.
That's the sick irony here: a guy who couldn't run a casino in Atlantic City is once again, somehow running the country. Unable to handle the complex responsibilities and manage the finances and solve the problems and do the work of overseeing a few hotels, he is now using this nation as a similarly doomed-to-fail vanity project; a way to build his brand and sell his tchotchkes and line his nest egg, without caring how he does it.
I'm really sad how many Americans did so little research, how uninterested they were in his actual resume, and how easily they were duped three times (and still seemed to be) by his spit-shined snake oil sales pitch, which peddles only fool's gold that will prove worthless.
In just a few short weeks, Donald Trump is doing to America what he did to the Taj Mahal. He will leave the former like he did the latter: bankrupt and crumbling, without giving a damn about the people whose lives he ruined or the suffering left in his wake.
I'm not okay with that—not at all.
I don't think this country should wait until it simply becomes another hopelessly failed and beyond-rescue business venture of a man whose only allegiance is to himself.
Yes, Trump is running America like his businesses: right into the ground.
We should jettison him while we're still able to recover.
We shouldn't let him financially or morally bankrupt this nation.
With our strategic activism and through the courts and with our dollars and with our collective power, we need to stop this, now.
Trump was in real estate following the footsteps of his father. His father was not a shining light in building but he was very wealthy and used it to get attention. He schooled Donald in Real Estate and I watched as he grew in power. I am from NY and everyone knew of Donald Trump. He was considered a great real estate mogul. However, his buildings barred people of color, were known for not paying those who were hired to work on them - he would find some fault or other and then walk away from the bill leaving the people he hired to either eat the loss or go bankrupt. He then turned to Atlantic City which was rebuilding from years of loss. Casinos hit the area and Trump built THREE of them. They all were successes at least for a while. I often wondered why a person would build 3 casinos that were in competition with each other. Well first one folded and then another. It put so many people out of work, left contracts unpaid and Atlantic City lost it's cache as being the place to have fun and was no longer a mini Vegas. Does this sound familiar? It does to me - he has now on his revenge tour come back in charge and is dismantling this country piece by piece and the heck with the people, the children growing up here and those that are either starting out or are retired and have dreamed of their retirement that they worked for all their lives. IT'S going to disappear. Just like Atlantic City - oh sure the city is still there a mere shadow of what it was.
Trump is a user and abuser. He takes what he wants and never pays for it PEOPLE do and he is not one of them. Since he is older he now has Elon to help him strip this country of its riches. Yes I am angry - I worked all my life as did my dad and mom and their parents to help build this country and I now see it being taken apart piece by piece. It's disgusting that he is getting away with the rape of this country - but he does know how to abuse now doesn't he.
As a lifelong voter, just an 89 year old Democrat, I knew way before this past election that. He was a loser in every way! If I questioned my thought, all I had to hear was the Project 2025 that had been designed with someone like him as president to implement it! I am so sad. I am spending my time, calling, emailing and staying informed and communicating with young people who I hope to make the removal of this traitor happen! Thank you, John, for speaking the truths!!!!