It's Official: Trump Is Turning the United States into Atlantic City
Yesterday, the South Lawn turned into a car lot - selling lemon cars is a skill passed down through generations in South Jersey where Atlantic City once - ever so briefly - thrived.
It’s not like Atlantic City was thriving before America’s Grifter-in-Chief came to town with his usual bluster and soon-to-be empty promises. The Victorian Era, turn-of-the-century fame of the seaside town, which eventually receded into national irrelevance by the 1960s, suffered from the kind of urban blight many such resort towns did across America. The developer of the “golden Trump Tower” on 5th Avenue promised to restore the city’s vitality.
Trump’s effect on Atlantic City was similar to what happened to my 20-year-old (beloved) cat, Marcello. Lovingly known as “Fatty” because of his size, Marcello became ill in early 2022. The vet said he had some form of cat cancer that was brought on by age — Marcello was a happy and sprightly 20 despite his girth and loved playing with my toddler. He was struggling mightily, but the vet gave him a concoction of vitamins which rehydrated him, and over the next two months turned the clock back on Marcello. He was no longer 20 but 10! He was bounding through the apartment like a wild animal, chasing my son and making what I was sure were “cat smiles.”
Then, a week before the war in Ukraine began, the concoction stopped working, and poor Marcello reverted to a version of himself that was arguably weaker and more vacant of hope for a brighter future than before the concoction. We left for vacation — which, because of the war, turned into a form of exile — a week later. Marcello died alone in the apartment one week after we left. My mother-in-law came to feed him and our second cat, and poor Fatty was lying near his water bowl, lifeless.
Forgive me for going here, but to honor Marcello, I will do this: This is what Atlantic City resembled shortly after Trump’s three casinos and two other businessescollapsed into bankruptcy.
At one point, Trump had three casinos in Atlantic City, employing 8,000 people and accounting for nearly a third of the area’s gambling revenues. But they eventually became unsustainable thanks to a mixture of enormous debts, rival venues, weak local demand and negative press, which suggested Trump’s businesses were facilitating money laundering — something later given credence when the Taj was fined $10m for failing to report suspicious transactions. Two, the Trump Castle and the Taj, now have new owners, but the famous Trump Plaza, which once hosted Wrestlemania and Mike Tyson fights, stands derelict and is set to be demolished.
The failure of the now president’s five Atlantic City businesses resulted in thousands of job losses and put dozens of local contractors out of business because they were, much like the elephant sculptor, unpaid. Yet, during his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump boasted of how he took “incredible” amounts of money out of Atlantic City, borrowing cash from third parties so his own wealth wasn’t affected by his various businesses going under. According to Rose, his legacy is best reflected by Atlantic City’s 7.4% unemployment rate — nearly double the national average. “When Trump failed with his casinos,” says Rose, “he turned Atlantic City into a ghost town. His legacy still haunts the boardwalk (Trump Turned this Place into a Ghost Town).”
In the way that Charlton Heston’s character Taylor kept coming across reminders of a lost past glory of planet Earth, one can stumble upon shards of Trump’s past grift. There is a massive, multi-ton statue of an elephant that Trump commissioned to be made for the opening of the Taj Mahal. In big, bright letters that can still be seen today, the word “Trump” is written across its base. Fake happy moments of smiling faces of employees of the casinos can be seen in posters still covering the windows of the “HR Office” for one of Trump’s former casinos.
Atlantic City is the finest example of Trumpian grift manipulated with maddening precision and then left to grow or die. But because all of Trump’s promises are always planted in nutrient-starved soil, the initial growth of anything, thanks to the enthusiasm and energy of others, inevitably gives way to complete deterioration, which wipes out local ecosystems. This is today’s Atlantic City. What remains are neighborhoods that became hooked on the good (jobs) and bad (everything else!) that casinos bring.
As I have been preaching for years, and despite all of the greed-driven people who like to go on about how Trump was good for their “portfolios,” the disease of Trump will eventually wreck America. All one has to do is look at everything this sick, raping criminal touches. All one has to do is ask anyone that has ever worked with him, for him, or was in his previous administration.
Mr. Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
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 (How Trump Bankrupted His Casinos).
While Trump’s shareholders were taking a bath, Trump was pulling out handsome bonuses and annual salaries. Eventually, his shareholders agreed to let him leave so long as he left the casino management. The hope was that professional management teams could save the failing casinos.
“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?’”
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. She said it took three years to recover any money owed for his work on the casino, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects. He says he’ll make America great again, but his past shows the complete opposite of that (How Trump Bankrupted His Casinos).”
During Trump’s first term, a lot of his worst instincts were mitigated, thanks to existing guardrails. There were also enough people in place smart enough to distract him long enough so he would forget his most hairbrained ideas. There are countless reports of people removing off-the-wall executive orders from his desk so he couldn’t sign them. Today, those guardrails don’t exist. We are getting 100 percent pure Donald. We are getting all of the ignorance, criminality, and incompetence of one of the dumbest, most narcissistic people alive. Trump’s on-again-off-again approach to this trade war with our closest allies is ruining people, and it will sooner or later bring down the nation’s economy.
Trump presciently warned us yesterday when he turned the South Lawn into a used car lot. When people set off to ride south in New Jersey, there is an unofficial starting point for the famous Pinelands. Some believe it starts when the forest floor turns into a sandy loam or when the forests thin out into endless, small-diametered pines that never grow too high to fully block out the sky. No. There are forests like this around Freehold, which is not considered the Pine Barrens.
The Pinelands begin when you see rinky-dink used car dealerships, one after another, dotting the country highways which snake southward toward the shittiest city on the shore. Pawn shops, tattoo parlors, ones from the years when tattoos weren’t a Gen Z attempt at feeling alive, and even the random adult book store — yes, they still exist — are interspersed between the car dealerships where one would do themselves a real solid by watching the Brady Bunch episode when Greg buys his first car: Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware).
Yesterday, on the South Lawn, a car dealership was opened up, and the President of the United States used the power of his office to grift for his main benefactor and to influence the value of stocks for that benefactor.
And not a single cultist found anything wrong with this.
Resist! Boycott Tesla! Wear a t-shirt.
Yes, history will repeat itself, again. USA will be an Atlantic City. Crypto, NFTs, government contracts will be the grift and banks will soon learn their lesson...Trumpcession yes, global collapse?