Filenews 10 February 2025 - by Dan Alexander
President Trump's proposal last week to turn Gaza from a "hellhole" into a "Middle Eastern Riviera" has provoked reactions from leaders around the world. This is not the first time Trump has touted luxury developments as a tool for urban regeneration. Let's go back in time and remember what Trump did in Atlantic City.
"Trump knows the art of promotion perfectly," says Nicholas Ribis, who served as CEO of the Casino Empire. "No one could promote it better than him – as he does with his plan for the Gaza Strip. It's a great idea. It will never materialize, but it is exceptional."
Trump first became interested in Atlantic City in the late 1970s, when gambling was legalized and casinos in the city generated $134 million in revenue in their first year. He started working over the phone, after receiving information that a plot of land, belonging to an architect and adjacent to his father's real estate, was for sale. Locals didn't always take kindly to Trump's plans — a woman who owned a small hotel near a plot of land didn't want to sell it, and it caused infighting in the Trump camp. "I refused to curse her," recalls Alan Marcus, a communications consultant who worked with Trump at the time. "He believes that if you insult someone, you defend your rights by belittling the other. He believes that if you defame someone, you are superior."
Trump Plaza opened in 1984. Trump's Castle a year later and Trump Taj Mahal in 1990, with the young tycoon advertising it as the "Eighth Wonder of the World". Throughout this period, he followed the same tactic, says Barbara Resch, who was involved in the construction of Trump Tower. "Trump magnifies everything," he explains. "He can take anything, put his name on it and say this is the greatest building ever built. That's what he does."
Casinos generated impressive revenues, but not enough to cover Trump's debts, which in the early 1990s led to several bankruptcies. Trump found easy money on the stock market. Investors bought shares of his listed company, which debuted on Wall Street in 1995 under the symbol "DJT". Initially the company owned one casino, then Trump added two more, piling debt on the listed company's balance sheet. Investors paid the price when the casino business went bankrupt twice more in the 2000s.
What has Trump learned from Atlantic City? That the advertising campaign counts. Never mind that casino finances didn't work out for him — Trump flew in a helicopter, attracted crowds, hosted boxing matches and built huge buildings. And all of this convinced banks at first, then bondholders, and then investors to believe in Trump's vision. "He knows very well how to form other people's opinions," Marcus explains. "Some of the smartest guys on Wall Street made the mistake of investing and reinvesting in Trump's debt even though they knew he didn't intend to repay it." Big losses followed, but Trump did well, thanks in part to a strategy he pursued by moving money from the listed company to... his pocket.
One of Trump's abilities is to attract other people's money. In the early 1980s, with about $400,000 in his current account, Trump had lenders giving him millions, and by the end of the decade. Billion. "It's a combination of charm, power and manoeuvrability," said Andrew Weiss, who worked for the Trump Organization from 1981 to 2017. "Somehow he manages to win people over, even when they think what he says is out of place and out of time or. I've seen him do it many times."
Trump is doing the same with Gaza, implying that American taxpayers will pay nothing to implement his plan." They could finance neighbouring wealthy countries," he said on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia immediately rejected the idea and a Qatari spokesman said it was too early to talk about such things. It is unlikely that any Arab state will accept to finance Gaza's "transformation" into a "Riviera".
But who knows, maybe Trump will find money again, maybe someone will be willing to throw away a few billion to please the U.S. president, and he in turn funnel it into implementing a controversial project in Gaza to present himself as a winner.
