Trump’s real estate career offers a hint of Kennedy Center’s future
Just one month after Donald Trump boarded Marine One and headed off to exile at Mar-a-Lago in January 2021, a symbolic coda to his career as a builder and politician took place in Atlantic City, New Jersey. After years of disrepair, the once opulent Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino came tumbling down to cheers from onlookers who had all paid $10 to watch the demolition from their cars.
The moment didn’t last, of course, as Trump made the greatest comeback in American political history four years later. But his Atlantic City years should have been a cautionary tale for all those who believed his alleged acumen as a businessman could make them rich. Trump, after all, is among the very few people to have repeatedly gone bankrupt running casinos. That’s not an easy feat.
The president’s reputation was always built on his own hype. He was constantly in trouble throughout his career, dancing as fast as he could to stay ahead of the creditors and the banks, somehow, through sheer force of personality, persuading them to keep lending him money when it made no financial sense at all. In fact, according to economist Brad DeLong’s estimate, if Trump had simply taken all the money his father Fred had given him over the years — about $500 million in today’s money — and passively invested it in Manhattan real estate instead of squandering it with repeated failures in the real estate business and bankruptcies, he would have been worth more than $80 billion at the time of his first inauguration as president. Even now, with all the alleged corruption and grift, Trump’s estimated net worth is $6.5 billion. He could have spent his whole life doing nothing but golfing and hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein, and he would have ended up vastly more wealthy than he is today.
DeLong quotes a New York developer describing Trump’s reputation as a real estate mogul as “mirage[s], built on inherited wealth, shady deals, and a relentless pursuit of appearances over substance.” That sounds a whole lot like the president’s political career as well.
Trump is actually terrible at business. And as he approaches the final years of his political career we are seeing that his talent for financial disaster has carried over to his tenure in government.
Just as he managed to squander the large inheritance his father gave him he has turned the recovering economy he inherited from President Joe Biden into a slump. Just as if he had ridden the real estate boom in Manhattan during the 1980s and ‘90s instead of letting his ego run wild, Trump could have just continued with the Biden economy and gotten credit for its success, which is largely what happened in the first term. (The wrenching recovery from the devastating financial crisis of 2008 had taken years to achieve, but it was in full effect by the time Trump took office.)
Just as if he had ridden the real estate boom in Manhattan during the 1980s and ‘90s instead of letting his ego run wild, Trump could have just continued with the Biden economy and gotten credit for its success, which is largely what happened in the first term.
This time around, he decided that he knew better than the experts, and he came in with a bunch of hare-brained plans. Following the pattern of his reckless failed airline, football teams, developments and casinos of his previous career, Trump decided he would indulge his juvenile obsession with tariffs and upend the world economy right off the bat. His draconian immigration policies have strained the domestic economy, and his spending cuts, along with massive tax cuts for wealthy people like himself, have slowed economic growth and kept inflation and interest rates higher than they should be. His daft war of choice in Iran has disrupted the global energy market, causing gas prices to stay high and feed inflation. The only bright spot is a stock market bubble largely due to speculation in artificial intelligence, but that’s precarious and largely irrelevant to ordinary people.
Just like those old days in New York, his answer to his current failures is to hype himself as an historic world figure leading the country into an unprecedented golden age of peace and prosperity. He started his first year back in office relentlessly lobbying for the Nobel Peace Prize and ended it by demolishing the historic East Wing of the White House, without any consultation or permission, to build a grand ballroom that looks like a Grecian temple that will dwarf the mansion itself.
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The White House now resembles something Liberace would say is a little over the top. Trump has plans to build a huge triumphal arch and put gold leaf on statues all over the capital. (I won’t even mention the Reflecting Pool debacle.) He’s holding modern-day gladiator fights and chariot races on the grounds of the White House and in the streets of Washington. In other words, he’s now trying to turn the city into another one of his gaudy casinos, modeled on a weird combination of Versailles and imperial Rome, his presidential failures be damned.
Like the Roman emperors, Trump has no compunction about putting his name and image on everything, even if it means replacing his predecessors’ with his own. His signature will soon adorn our paper currency — a presidential first — and his face will appear on coins. (It’s already on a special edition U.S. passports.) And in one of the most grotesque usurpations of someone else’s honor and respect, his name was emblazoned on the John F. Kennedy Memorial for the Performing Arts, the nation’s living memorial to the slain president, following a vote by the organization’s board that he had stacked with sycophants.
After a judge ruled this illegal, the center covered up its entire name rather than simply removing Trump’s. This week, his lawyers filed a brief demanding that the president be allowed to “restore” the building to his liking (with his name all over it), or he will tear it down and build a large outdoor amphitheatre where it stands, which is almost too on the nose.
As with his casinos, Trump’s 2025 takeover of the Kennedy Center was a financial disaster. According to a Washington Post report, revenues dropped precipitously when he announced the change and then completely cratered when his name was added. Maybe some big amphitheatre shows feeding foreigners to lions will boost ticket sales.
Trump’s story has never changed. He is a hype artist who never delivers what he promises and damages everything he touches. The good news is that when new ownership takes over of organizations, companies and properties, they can often be salvaged. Right now, the former Trump Taj Mahal, which fell into bankruptcy and disrepair under its namesake, is now thriving in Atlantic City as the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. We’ll just have to hope that America has the same resiliency.
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