Trump took Trump Plaza public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1995, and by 2004, through a series of maneuvers and self-dealing, he had made more than $200 million while the company, which came to own his Taj Mahal and the Trump Marina, lost $647 million and declared bankruptcy. This money wasn’t going to be gambled at the tables-it went to Donald Trump so he could pay interest payments on a loan. That same year, Fred, Trump’s father, sent a lawyer to the Taj in Atlantic City to purchase $3.5 million in chips. “The possibility of a complete financial collapse of the Trump Organization is not out of the question.” , one New Jersey regulator said at the time that the would-be president’s business was in a precarious position. As Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander writes in his book about Trump, White House, Inc. To fund his vision of opulence in Atlantic City, which eventually included the Taj Mahal, which opened in 1990 and the Trump Marina, which was first dubbed Trump Castle and opened in 1985, Trump raised $675 million in bonds.īy 1990, the Trump Organization had amassed $3.4 billion in debt, straining the entire company. In 1984, Donald Trump opened the Trump Plaza, which at the time was a joint operation with Harrah’s running the casino. Ringmaster: In the early years of Trump Plaza, Donald Trump (with Sugar Ray Leonard and Don King) hosted many heavyweight fights as well as two WrestleManias.
