Question of the Day - 28 April 2020

Why have another casino to bankrupt?

Trump, who of course has gone on to bigger and better things."

Really? Really? Bigger is not neccessarily better. (The QoD went political first, so the commendable rule to avoid political comment was waived.)

We made no comment about Trump. "Bigger" and "better" are adjectives that modify the noun "things," an idiom that refers to the presidency of the United States. So let's try and keep this QoD apolitical. It's about a building.  

Bigger & better refers to the job itself, not to his performance n the job. 

When it was built it was supposed to be condos, but that's about the same time the bottom fell out of the housing market. They switched the condos to timeshare units with an agreement between the building owner and Hilton Vacations. At least that's what I was led to believe as an owner of HGVC. I've never stayed there, as it's a bit too far off of the action for me. I much prefer Elara (at Planet Hollywood) or the Flamingo property (next to the Great Wheel) when I go to Vegas.

Each new project is a new corporation, and Trump is a investor. This insulates his other investments from getting impacted if something goes wrong with the new project. Typically Trump will try to further insulate his portion of the investment by purchasing the land. If the project was 300 million and split 3 ways, he would claim the land + use of his name is his 100m investment. Just like any other mob run project his investment comes with the condition that they use Trump Construction so he can siphon off a good portion of the cash into his coffers. 

Trump maintains ownership of the land and creates a revenue stream by leasing the land back to the operation.

Per earlier comments if the project goes bankrupt - Trump has very little cash in the game, land is still owned, and leased back to the project, and he has the other investors cash siphoned from Trump Construction.  He doesn't care if it goes bankrupt he is already monied up.

At the time Trump Tower was planned, the "word on the street" was that the big boys, Adelson, Wynn, Maloof, et all, were in extreme opposition to Trump being involved in any gambling venture in Vegas.
Each, having a certain amount of pull with the Gambling Commission, pushed all they could to keep him out, as well as trying to stall his efforts at building a condo property.
Of course the official version is as Deke stated.

Whether the presidency you refer to references the non-specific, generic presidency as you maintain or to the specific presidency that began in 2017 is open to debate. It could reasonably be either.

You may be on firmer ground, though, when trying a second, unrelated gambit that what "it" referred to was a building. The White House is undeniably a bigger and better building than a four acre Strip casino co-owned with Phil Ruffin. 

I would make the second one my only pitch, because you can't logically make both. It's either one or the other. By asserting "it" referred to both a presidency AND a building, you weaken your case.

After all of the casino bankruptcies (at least 4, maybe more) associated with Trump on the east coast maybe he didn't want to risk that happening with his tower building and "brand" in Las Vegas. He would be going up against some of the best casino owners and operators in the world in Las Vegas. Plus his tower building just isn't big enough at ground level to have a decent-size casino, he never wants to be seen as being smaller than a competitor. So if he couldn't have a huge casino floor space like MGM or Venetian then he didn't want to do it at all. Ego is a big part of his decision-making. 

Martin Sheldin
You should get that bad case of TDS checked out.

The Riviera investment was made just to get access to a license for Trump Tower, but it never was full license. Enter Phil Ruffin!

Nevada will never give Trump a gaming license now. That river was crossed when his Atlantic City casino businesses went bankrupt 5 times. Then, of course there is January 6th!

The Riviera investment was made just to get access to a license for Trump Tower, but it never was a full license. Enter Phil Ruffin!

Nevada will never give Trump (or his children) a full gaming license now. That river was crossed when his Atlantic City casino businesses went bankrupt 5 times. Then, of course there is January 6th!

Sandra, the casino did not go bankrupt that Trump had in Atlantic City. They actually got out of that before it ever went bankrupt. They did so because they were moving onto other things. And then the casinos went bankrupt later.