Down here it’s just winners and losers
By
The NYT article about Trump’s use of the Profit for Me, Risks for Thee business model is the detailed explanation of the complete clusterfuck that is his presidential campaign.
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.
In three interviews with The Times since late April, Mr. Trump acknowledged in general terms that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He did not recall details about some issues, but did not question The Times’s findings. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
The short explaination is he’s been consistently rewarded for blundering and blustering around, trashing shit and most importantly, being fastidious about deflecting downward any harm that might result from his incompetence. Toto, I think we’re back in Kansas!
“Early on, I took a lot of money out of the casinos with the financings and the things we do,” he said in a recent interview. “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.”
Others were hurt.
“He helped expand Atlantic City, but he just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant and a former casino executive at Resorts International. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Mr. Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on the casino, she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
How much more of a hyper-privileged sack of rabid mongooses Republican success story can one man be? Admittedly, he didn’t create Trump! The Prison! and force the prisoners to build the casinos, but I don’t know if private prisons were in vogue back in the 80s.
The only question is how much money Trump will be able to shake out of his latest investors – the RNC. I predict the amount will be somewhere in the vicinity of yooge.
