{"id":19550,"date":"2017-03-30T07:20:08","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T15:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=19550"},"modified":"2021-06-26T04:37:14","modified_gmt":"2021-06-26T12:37:14","slug":"trumps-amman-castle-wynn-goes-0-for-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/trumps-amman-castle-wynn-goes-0-for-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump&#8217;s Amman Castle?; Wynn goes 0-for-2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gambling is illegal in <strong>Jordan<\/strong> but that doesn&#8217;t stop <strong>Donald Trump<\/strong>. The new president&#8217;s company has renewed the trademark <img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6766\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/trump-sits.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"134\" height=\"134\" \/>for a Jordanian casino. This won&#8217;t play well with religious hawks in the Hashemite kingdom, who went into full cry when a previous regime <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2011\/sep\/12\/jordan-prime-minister-supercasino\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tried to sneak a British-built, tourists-only casino<\/a> onto the shores of the <strong>Dead Sea<\/strong> in 2007. It was enough of a scandal to be dubbed &#8220;Casinogate.&#8221; A previous attempt to build two tourist casinos in 2003 also went nowhere. Why the Trumps thought this time would be any different &#8212; and whether they expect any <em>quid pro quo<\/em> remains to be seen.<\/p>\n<p>The official <strong>White House<\/strong>\u00a0policy in such matters is that the left hand (President Trump) doesn&#8217;t <!--more-->know what the right hand (his children) are doing. And if you believe that, lemme sell you this groovy bridge in <strong>Brooklyn<\/strong>. The former chief ethics officer for <strong>George W. Bush<\/strong>&#8216;s administration, <strong>Robert Painter<\/strong>, certainly isn&#8217;t buying it.\u00a0&#8220;If we&#8217;re going to get involved in trying to work out <strong>Middle East<\/strong> peace, Jordan is a key player.\u00a0We&#8217;re going to have a lot of different things on the table and I guess this casino is going to be part of what&#8217;s on the table,&#8221; he sighed, &#8220;That&#8217;s just corruption.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Or crony capitalism. At any rate, who knew gambling would become a flash point so soon into the Trump administration?<\/p>\n<p>* <strong>Steve Wynn<\/strong> lost another attempt to curb free speech when the <strong>Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/wynn-loses-slander-appeal-against-chanos-2017-3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">swatted away his lawsuit<\/a> against stock picker <strong>Jim Chanos<\/strong>. The latter&#8217;s crime? He had voiced <img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7935\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/steve-wynn-1-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/steve-wynn-1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/steve-wynn-1-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/steve-wynn-1.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>concerns about corruption in <strong>Macao<\/strong> during a speaking engagement in 2014. Wynn took this as a personal affront, sued, lost the first round and now has been defeated again. Will Wynn take a hint and abandon this quixotic tilt? Considering that he&#8217;d on the hook for Chanos&#8217; legal fees, we suggest he quit while he&#8217;s behind.<\/p>\n<p>* <strong>Glenn Straub<\/strong> can&#8217;t reopen <strong>Revel<\/strong>\/<strong>Ten<\/strong>&#8216;s casino yet but he&#8217;s doing the next best thing, creating brand awareness through a &#8220;Ten&#8221; social gaming site. Its functionality is very much like that of any other <strong>New Jersey<\/strong> Web casino, except that no money can be won or lost. Straub<br \/>\nplans to go eventually for a full-blown <strong>Internet<\/strong> casino, run by his stalking horse, <strong>Connecticut<\/strong> developer <strong>Robert Landino<\/strong>. Straub doesn&#8217;t care to get personally involved in &#8216;Net betting, giving it a firm &#8220;Hell no.&#8221; We&#8217;re getting increasingly excited to see what Straub makes of Ten, the mega resort, but think he could have found somebody with more gaming experience than the builder of <strong>Dunkin&#8217; Donuts Park<\/strong> in <strong>Hartford<\/strong>. Revel&#8217;s third casino incarnation needs someone other than a beginner at the helm.<\/p>\n<p>* <strong>Genting Group<\/strong> can&#8217;t seem to accelerate\u00a0<strong>Resorts World Las Vegas<\/strong> but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ggrasia.com\/gen-singapore-strong-suitor-for-japan-lim-kok-thay\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">it&#8217;s already got its eyes firmly fixed<\/a> on <strong>Japan<\/strong>. The company&#8217;s annual report states it &#8220;will be positioning the group as a strong candidate for the bidding process.\u201d If successful, Genting would add the Land of the Rising Sun\u00a0to a list of conquests that ranges from <strong>Singapore<\/strong> to <strong>Great Britain<\/strong>, from <strong>New York City<\/strong> to the <strong>Philippines<\/strong>. Interestingly, the report seems to have made no mention of the status of the <strong>Las Vegas<\/strong> project, which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reviewjournal.com\/business\/casinos-gaming\/crews-place-work-platform-resorts-world-las-vegas-site\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">continues to creep forward<\/a> with agonizing slowness, although Genting has made good on its pledge to resume work by early 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gambling is illegal in Jordan but that doesn&#8217;t stop Donald Trump. The new president&#8217;s company has renewed the trademark for a Jordanian casino. This won&#8217;t play well with religious hawks in the Hashemite kingdom, who went into full cry when &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/trumps-amman-castle-wynn-goes-0-for-2\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[42,120,185,22,37,171,62,157,32,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19550"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19550"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29763,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19550\/revisions\/29763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}