At CNN on Wednesday, Gloria Borger tried to figure out how Donald Trump lost nearly $1 billion in 1995, as declared on a personal tax return leaked to The New York Times. Trump's accountant up until that year, Jack Mitnick, disputes Trump's boasts about his expertise in tax law, and Borger spoke with two people involved in Trump's 1990s collapse who disputed his business acumen. First, she spoke with securities analyst Marvin Roffman, an expert in the Atlantic City casino industry Trump bet big on in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Donald Trump built two casinos in Atlantic City and then bought the massive Taj Mahal, his biggest gamble ever, Borger explained, and when he called up Roffman to brag about the Taj Mahal deal, Roffman said he told Trump: "'I think you did a great deal, but I think you made a mistake.... Why own three casinos in Atlantic City? How are you going to differentiate the marketing?' And here was his comment: 'Marvin, you have no vision. This is going to be a monster property.'" For Trump to break even, "you'd have to generate a casino win of somewhere over a million dollars day," Roffman explained. "And no casino in the world had ever even come close to anything like that."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
The Israeli army's 'tourist hikes' in occupied Golan HeightsUnder The Radar 'Provocative' twice-daily tours into territory seized from Syria have quickly sold out
-
The Resistance: Is it finally taking off?Feature Mass protests erupted across all 50 states during the 'Hands Off!' demonstrations against the Trump administration
-
Loomer: Feeding Trump's paranoiaFeature Trump fires National Security Council officials after the conspiracy theorist attended a meeting in the Oval Office
-
Markets notch worst quarter in years as new tariffs loomSpeed Read The S&P 500 is on track for its worst month since 2022 as investors brace for Trump's tariffs
-
Tesla Cybertrucks recalled over dislodging panelsSpeed Read Almost every Cybertruck in the US has been recalled over a stainless steel panel that could fall off
-
Crafting emporium Joann is going out of businessSpeed Read The 82-year-old fabric and crafts store will be closing all 800 of its stores
-
Trump's China tariffs start after Canada, Mexico pausesSpeed Read The president paused his tariffs on America's closest neighbors after speaking to their leaders, but his import tax on Chinese goods has taken effect
-
Chinese AI chatbot's rise slams US tech stocksSpeed Read The sudden popularity of a new AI chatbot from Chinese startup DeepSeek has sent U.S. tech stocks tumbling
-
US port strike averted with tentative labor dealSpeed Read The strike could have shut down major ports from Texas to Maine
-
Biden expected to block Japanese bid for US SteelSpeed Read The president is blocking the $14 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan's Nippon Steel, citing national security concerns
-
Judges block $25B Kroger-Albertsons mergerSpeed Read The proposed merger between the supermarket giants was stalled when judges overseeing two separate cases blocked the deal
