Donald Trump and the casino gaming empire

In the United States of America, where wrestling is all the rage , catchphrases are all the rage . “You’re fired!” it’s not exactly a cheerful motto, since it’s an exclamation that states the dismissal, but if that ‘s Donald John Trump’s catchphrase , or just Donald Trump … who are we to judge?

You can’t tell the story of Donald Trump without bringing up the game, or rather the casinos , that is, the business to which the most famous group from overseas immediately refers.

After taking his first steps in real estate with the help of his father, in the 1980s Donald Trump invested heavily in the casino sector, focusing especially on Atlantic City .

In 1984, the first element of his “triptych” was Harrah’s at Trump Plaza , later renamed simply Trump Plaza, which was followed by Trump’s Castle Casino Resort the following year and the very famous Trump Taj Mahal in 1990, a casino that in that moment it became the largest gambling hall in the world .

It was the heyday of Donald Trump’s empire in the game, so much so that at that time the entrepreneur even bought:

  • The New Jersey Generals, a team from the now defunct US Football League
  • Mar-a-Lago, a huge 118-room mansion in Palm Beach, Florida
  • An 85-meter yacht, the second largest in the world, renamed Trump Princess
  • An East Coast airline, renamed Trump Shuttle .

The recession in the 1990s: Donald Trump’s casinos in crisis

When the US economy went into recession in 1990, many of Donald Trump’s gambling businesses, including casinos, went into crisis. Soon, Trump found himself struggling to pay off his debts of about $ 5 billion, $ 900 million of which he personally secured.

The entrepreneur was thus forced to sell his Trump Shuttle, purchased by US Airways in 1992, and to sell his Trump Princess. Despite a major debt restructuring, the Trump Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy in 1991, while the other two casinos, and New York’s Plaza Hotel , did the same the following year. According to a CNN investigation , Donald Trump’s company had incurred $ 1.7 billion in debt in 1996 .

In reality, Donald Trump has always defended his casino, stating that the rumors about economic difficulties and crashes were just rumors. In a tweet posted to his account in 2014, the entrepreneur said he had never failed and had earned “more than $ 10 billion” from the Atlantic City gaming industry .

The rebirth

The situation improved towards the end of the decade, with the rebound of the American economy and above all the decision of the German Deutsche Bank to establish its presence in the real estate market made in the USA. Deustche Bank extended hundreds of millions of dollars in claims on Trump. That money was used for some projects such as New York’s Trump World Tower and Chicago’s Trump International Hotel and Tower .

In the new millennium, the businessman Donald Trump was joined by the political Donald Trump. In 2016, the big opportunity: he won the Republican primary and ran for the presidential elections of the same year, when defeating the odds he overtook the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton becoming the new head of state, after Barack Obama .