30 years and waiting
Former reality television show personality turned United States President Donald Trump once had his named plastered on three Atlantic City casinos.
Though he no longer owns any casinos in the New Jersey gambling town, his influence still remains, and not in a good way. Many contractors who built the Trump Taj Mahal 30 years ago are still waiting for Donald Trump to pay them what they are owed.
they will never see another dime from the most powerful person in the world
In a recent report, NorthJersey.com relayed the stories of several contractors who are still waiting for payments from Trump. They know, though, that they will never see another dime from the most powerful person in the world.
Forced to take pennies on the dollar
One such person is Steve Jenkins, who now co-owns Triad Building Specialties, a company started by his father in the 1970’s. Jenkins was 19-years old when Triad was hired to install much of the non-plumbing hardware in the public restrooms of the Trump Taj Mahal in 1990. The contract was for $300,000.
Triad was not paid for its work. Trump knew he was not going to be able to pay, but continued to boast about how great of a businessman he was.
Jenkins wasn’t alone. Marty Rosenberg’s company, Atlantic Plate and Glass, won the contract to install the vast majority of the glass and mirrors at the Taj. It didn’t take long for Rosenberg to realize that he wasn’t going to get paid; he was still owed $1.5 million by the time the former east coast poker hub opened on April 2, 1990.
Trump told him he would only get one-third of what he was owed, so Rosenberg got other contractors together to try to put the screws to the future Celebrity Apprentice host. It didn’t work. Rosenberg was ultimately able to pay the people he himself owed, but he had to take out loans to do so. Though Rosenberg is reluctant to talk about Trump, he did say:
If ethics and morality have nothing to do with business, then Donald Trump is a very good businessman.”
Trump’s way of doing business
None of this was by accident. Donald Trump knew what he was doing. He used his name to get what he wanted, concerned only with making money for himself. In 2016, before Trump was elected President, The New York Times published an in-depth report of how he left people in Atlantic City ruined.
With the Taj Mahal specifically, he convinced the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to green light construction (which he took over from Resorts International) by saying he could get very low interest rates from banks. Instead, he issued $675 million worth of junk bonds at an astronomical 14.4% rate. The casino already had $820 million in debt on its books before it opened.
It was mathematically impossible for the Trump Taj Mahal to make enough money to pay off the debts. Trump knew it. But he was too big to fail. Thus, when the Taj was in bankruptcy court in 1991, lenders were willing to take control of half the casino while giving Trump lower rates and leniency on payment terms. That cycle continued multiple times, each time creditors taking less and less money, else they get nothing.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” Beth Rosser, Steve Jenkins’ sister, told The New York Times. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects.”