"He is harvesting and extorting the organizations he oversees for personal profit, while the rest of us will be left bereft amid the ruins"-Chris Hedges

I visited Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City the day before it closed, in October 2016. The casino had two huge white gates flanked by 2-ton white, cast-stone elephants. Its entrance was topped by an array of 70 turquoise and teal fiberglass minarets and a dozen gold-tipped domes. A neon sign with red and gold lettering read: “Trump Taj Mahal Casino and Resort.” A lighted fountain in front of the glass casino doors was decorated with two rows of six white-and-gold urns.

The Trump Taj Mahal, New Jersey’s tallest building and the world’s largest casino, cost $1.2 billion to build. The opulent suites, when they opened, were named after historical personalities — Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Napoleon and Cleopatra. The suites cost around $10,000 per day. Trump, whose name and image were plastered throughout the casino, employed his familiar hyperbole to call it the “eighth wonder of the world.” The casino operators were instructed to answer incoming calls with the words: “Thank you for calling the Trump Taj Mahal, where wonders never cease.” The waitresses wore “harem girl” outfits.

The casino went through bankruptcy five times. Trump is doing to the country what he did to the Taj Mahal. His administration is operating well beyond its means with a budget of $7.4 trillion for fiscal year 2026, against projected revenue of just $5.6 trillion. Trump’s idiocy has embroiled the United States in an endless and unwinnable war with Iran, which may tank the global economy. 

He is set to cut health coverage for 15 million people, along with food assistance and other basic needs programs. He has terminated the jobs of thousands of government employees. He has shut down USAID, the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Kennedy Center. He gutted Voice of America and vows to close the Department of Education. He withdrew from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement (twice). He continued the suspension of funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which had begun under the Biden administration. He canceled thousands of U.S.-funded international development projects. He erased government datasets and climate-related web pages. He slashed the budgets for renewable energy initiatives while revoking federal carbon and pollution regulations.

His scorched earth policies, which are dynamiting the foundations of the republic, are accompanied by a culture of corruption and deceit that is unmatched in American history.

Trump, whose officials face accusations of insider trading and whose family has made more than $1.4 billion from crypto-related ventures since taking office, shamelessly profits from the fusion of unregulated cryptocurrency-based prediction markets and politics pioneered by gambling apps, such as Poly-market.

Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, is a major investor in Poly-market, where he sits on the advisory board. He has an estimated net worth of $400 million. He also serves as a strategic advisor at Kalshi, which gave him equity in the company worth some $300,000 — now estimated to be worth millions. Kalshi recently announced it will allow users to bet on whether the FDA will approve individual drugs as “safe and effective.”

Trump’s Truth Social is developing a prediction market called Truth Predict. His administration sued Connecticut, Arizona and Illinois in an attempt to block these states from regulating prediction markets. Truth Social also launched a $100,000 per month service offering quicker access to Trump’s market manipulating posts — a thinly disguised version of insider trading.

The White House, replicating the mob-style shakedowns of Atlantic City’s casino culture, demands huge payouts from corporations and billionaires in exchange for political favors and deregulation. The Wall Street Journal writes that Trump has amassed a slush fund of $800 million for pet projects, including his ballroom, presidential library, super PACs and political issue committees.

Trump’s chief fundraiser, Meredith O’Rourke, nicknamed “The princess of darkness,” collects the payoffs with the blunt pitch “The boss wants this money.” The nonnegotiable demand is lifted from the playbook of Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, the head of the Bruno-Scarfo crime family, whose extortion racket collected millions from Atlantic City construction firms, businesses, bars, restaurants, unions – which saw their health and welfare funds looted – and casinos. And, just like the mob, once is never enough for the Trump crime syndicate.

It always comes back for more. Trump, who like most mobsters is accompanied by a much younger goomah — his latest being his executive assistant Natalie Harp — has a long history of mob-like retribution. He issued executive orders targeting law firms that previously employed attorneys who investigated him. The firms lost security clearances and access to federal courthouses. Scrambling to placate Trump, they sheepishly succumbed to his demands.

When I arrived at Trump’s casino, the 22-space tour bus terminal was empty. Most of the 12 restaurants in the casino were closed. The casino’s arena, seating 5,500 people, had shut its doors. The Trump Taj Mahal, like our republic, was about to die.

“When I walked inside the Taj, glittering Austrian crystal chandeliers, which cost $14 million each, dangled over the softly lit interior,” I wrote in America: The Farewell Tour. “Many were missing strings of beads. The walls were covered with mirrors. I looked out at rows of gaming tables, blackjack tables, roulette wheels, and three thousand slot machines that twinkled with colored lights. The slot machines emitted beeps, hums, and dings of various pitches. They stretched over an area the size of three football fields. The gambling floor was almost empty. The dealers stood in front of vacant, felt-covered tables. Most of the gamblers who slumped in the cushioned chairs in front of the slot machines were elderly and haggard. They robotically pulled down levers or pushed square buttons. They stared blankly at the spinning screens in front of them. One slot machine generates between $200 and $300 a day for the casino. The dedicated gamblers are given courtesy drinks. Housekeepers occasionally enter rooms to discover the corpses of elderly men or women who spent hours drinking more alcohol than their bodies could absorb. It is not uncommon for slot players to wet and soil themselves.”

“The seventeen computerized check-in desks near the entrance were empty,” I continued. “A lone clerk stood behind the long counter facing empty rope lines. Toilets in the bathrooms, adorned with Carrera marble, were covered with plastic bags and had signs reading ‘Out of Order.’ I walked along the soiled and worn carpet through long, deserted, and poorly lit corridors on the upper floors. Semicircular beige wall sconces, some of which enclosed burned-out bulbs, were placed every few feet on either side of the hall. The sconces were dirty and cracked. The ceiling had brown water spots. The air smelled of mold. Three quarters of the 1,250 rooms had been mothballed. The casino felt like a ghost ship.”

Gambling, like Trump’s sham university and his $TRUMP meme coin, is about selling escapist fantasies. It is about preying on people’s despair. The spinning reels on the slot machines, for example, are an illusion. They do not slowly run out of momentum. They are programmed to appear that way. Computer chips determine the outcome the moment the button is pushed or the lever pulled. Virtual reel mapping ensures that a jackpot symbol appears above or below the payline. The player has the impression of almost winning, spurring the gambler to bet more money.

Trump from his earliest days as a real estate developer was enmeshed with the mob, including his cutthroat lawyer, Roy Cohen. Cohen represented Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, the boss of the Genovese crime family, and Carmine Galante from the Bananno crime family. Trump was schooled by Cohen and others in the art of extortion, blackmail, threats and graft. He has, throughout his career, surrounded himself with mobsters, grifters and sycophants.

Joseph Weichselbaum, a three-time-convicted felon who was eventually imprisoned for trafficking marijuana and cocaine, managed Trump’s helicopter fleet. The helicopters ferried high rollers to and from Trump casinos. These high rollers could get anything they desired, from sex with escorts to cocaine. Weichselbaum’s easy access to drugs was probably an asset. When Weichselbaum was awaiting sentencing, Trump wrote to the judge that he was “a credit to the community.” The trafficker received a three-year sentence, although he served only 18 months. The couriers who physically delivered the drugs for Weichselbaum got up to 20 years. When he was released from prison, Weichselbaum moved into Trump Tower with his girlfriend.

Trump’s casino opened in 1990 with a concert by Michael Jackson. It was an extravaganza built with $820 million of unsustainable debt, including the issuing of $675 million in junk bonds at a 14 percent interest rate.

Marvin B. Roffman, a casino analyst at the Philadelphia investment firm Janney Montgomery Scott, told The Wall Street Journal that the Taj Mahal would need to make $1.3 million per day to meet its interest payments. No casino had ever brought in that much money.

“The Taj was doomed from the start,” I wrote. “Trump soon had to service interest rates of $95 million a year. He was able to get new loans for a while and then went bust. It was a brief and giddy moment of insane excess. But it was good for his outsized brand, even if it showed an atrocious lack of business sense. Trump had borrowed money at high interest rates and lied about the rates to regulators. Trump dumped the losses on stock and bondholders, who were fleeced for more than $1.5 billion. Numerous local contractors and suppliers, never paid by Trump, went bankrupt.”

Trump made out like a bandit. He put up little of his own money. He shifted personal debts to the casino and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. His casino employees collectively lost millions of dollars in retirement savings, along with their jobs. His business debts were off-loaded on his investors.

Trump owned three casinos in Atlantic City and one in Gary, Indiana. The Trump Plaza and the Trump Taj Mahal casinos were shut down. The Trump Marina, his third casino, was sold to Texas billionaire Tilman Fertitta. Fertitta, currently Trump’s ambassador to Italy, renamed it The Golden Nugget. Trump’s casino in Indiana, a 340-foot vessel called the Trump Princess, declared bankruptcy in 2004.

All failed because of Trump’s insatiable greed and mismanagement. Trump is doing to the nation what he did to the Taj Mahal. He is harvesting and extorting the organizations he oversees for personal profit, while the rest of us will be left bereft amid the ruins.

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Taj Mahal, the casino owned by Donald Trump in Atlantic City, USA. (Photo by Tony Ward/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)