Trump has never had to declare personal bankruptcy, but the company he set up to operate his Atlantic City casinos went through numerous corporate restructurings to reduce its debt load. When we invested in it, we thought, how could this stock go so low?” He was running the company and we were working for him. I thought, way back when, the guy was way brighter than we were. “I didn’t realize he was as stupid as he is,” says a former casino worker at Trump Plaza who asked not to be named. But the conflict shows how Trump’s exploitation of bankruptcy laws for his personal gain did end up hurting his employees. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed when a judge found no illegal actions on the part of Trump’s company. More than 400 employees lost a total of more than $2 million from their retirement accounts, the lawsuit states. Then, when the stock price was near its nadir as bankruptcy loomed, the company forced the employees to sell their stock at a huge loss. Trump’s company encouraged its employees to invest their retirement savings in company stock, according to a class-action lawsuit filed by employees against Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts following its 2004 bankruptcy. Yet among those who suffered as a result of Trump’s bankruptcies were his own casino employees, who collectively lost millions of dollars in retirement savings when the company’s value plummeted.

These are not the nice, sweet little people that you think, okay?” “These lenders aren’t babies,” he said during a Republican primary debate last fall. He made out well, he claims, at the expense only of his greedy Wall Street financiers. When pressed about the multiple bankruptcies at his Atlantic City casinos, Donald Trump routinely says the episodes highlight his business acumen. Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Trump casino atlantic city bankruptcy