As Donald Trump continues to boast of his business expertise, the Boston Globe examines his less-than-stellar track record in Atlantic City, scene of four bankruptcies. (Five, if you count the 
current insolvency of Trump Entertainment Resorts, in which he holds a 10% stake.) The Globe finds passionately divided sentiments when Trump’s name is mentioned: Some Atlantic citizens feel it was a dark day when he quitted the Boardwalk. Others believe it was good riddance.
If anything, the Globe story goes a little easy on Trump, ignoring his litany of broken promises, such as his vow to big something quintessentially Trumpian on the site of demolished Trump World’s Fair. As one pawn shop owner puts 
it, “You come in, you’re all fluff. And all the sudden you disappear.” Trump’s greatest coup may have been his first, in 1982, when he talked Harrah’s Entertainment into not only paying for the construction of Trump Plaza but of covering any operating losses through 1989. He’d never get that deal today. Says one prominent Trump creditor, “He was stiff-arming everybody. So when he left, it was perceived by the local businesses as a matter of relief.”
However, the most damning paragraph of the story reflects badly not on Trump but on TER CEO Bob Griffin, when it describes 
Trump Taj Mahal as “a shell of its former shelf … [the hotel room] doesn’t have stationery or a pen. There are no bathrobes, no minibar. Cups are plastic and Styrofoam, not glass and porcelain. Getting a Q-tip requires purchasing a $1 vanity kit at the hotel’s newsstand (called ‘Trump Times’). The jeweler next to the casino floor is offering 80 percent off everything in the store.” And to think that Trump wants to keep his name on this dilapidated monument to his failures at the seaside.
* The arena that MGM Resorts International and AEG are building near New York-New York was originally destined to be in front of Mandalay Bay, presumably on the acreage occupied by surface parking. But MGM CEO Jim Murren credits colleague Anthony Marnell with advising him to “Put it in the middle of the action” at its present location. In an interview with Norm(!) Clarke, Murren tries to ease locals’ fears of a nightmarish parking scenario.
“We have thousands and thousands of vacant parking spaces right now,” he says. “We oversized the garage at New York-New York 
because we thought we were going to build another tower there. We never did,” Murren explains, adding that the garages at Monte Carlo and Bellagio are “oversized” as well, and that there’s surplus parking to be had at MGM Grand and Excalibur. It sounds like it might still take a little hunting around to find a parking spot, what with the arena drawing upon so many garages, but also that MGM has thought this through … and that its second thoughts on siting the arena were better than its first ones.
* Add Israel to the list of companies that are considering legalizing casino gambling. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is open
to the idea of a casino resort in the Red Sea city of Eliat. And 
surprise, surprise, who’s believed to be thumping the tub for this? Sheldon Adelson, BFF of Netanyahu and (more to the point) owner of four Israeli newspapers. Considering everything Adelson has done for Israel, it would a stunner if he didn’t get first dibs on casino development there. As for Netanyahu, he’s fending off accusations that he leaned on the government of Japan as a proxy for Adelson. Israel currently has casino “cruises to nowhere” but no terrestrial form of legal gambling.
* In an era where a casino megaresort is being built (by MGM) on the doorstep of our nation’s capital, gambling is no longer quite the political leper it used to be. As though to prove the point, Las Vegas earned the final — and potentially decisive — debate of the 2016 presidential election. And then this happened.
