Trump casino takedown becomes New Jersey event

Comedian and impersonator John Walsh, disguised as Trump, on Monday outside the building in Atlantic City.CARLO ALLEGRI / Reuters

Atlantic City is the city where director Louis Malle portrayed Susan Sarandon smearing her arms with lemon juice before an absorbed Burt Lancaster, in a twilight drama that is as content as it is erotic.

But Atlantic City is also today, Donald Trump through, the scene of a

dynamite

with the pretense of a symbol: that of turning into rubble, also physically, any trace of the former Republican president.

The announced demolition of a hotel-casino that was his property, located in the city of the game and the hotels, the rusty wheels and the

with neon claims, will host this Wednesday a show that no one wants to miss, to the point of that many onlookers have rented rooms in nearby hotels, and some establishments will offer champagne to toast the demolition, literally speaking, of the ex-president's legacy.

A powerful postmodern image: Trump reduced to rubble amid a colossal, almost nuclear dust cloud.

Figuratively, of course.

Of the three hotel-casinos that the New York tycoon had in New Jersey City, a monoculture of roulette and baccarat that has seen better times, the so-called Trump Plaza, with 39 floors and 600 rooms, will be subjected to a controlled blast.

Located on the front line, it no longer belongs to the Republican since it was bought by the billionaire Carl C. Icahn -who later financed his campaign-, but the Trump brand remains, hence the curiosity of seeing how it fades between a rain of rubble.

Let architectural historians have no fear: nothing is lost, just a bland and functional building, blunt and cheap.

So much expectation surrounds the demolition that the City Council raised the possibility of auctioning the honor of giving the download button, but it was finally discarded after the objections of the company that owns the property.

The proceeds of the auction, with a starting price of $ 175,000 (about 145,000 euros) and an estimated bid of one million, was to be used to finance a youth organization in the city.

The establishment opened in 1984 during the

gambling

in Atlantic City, the only city to challenge the Las Vegas monopoly, with slot machines failing like fairground shotguns and two women injured on opening day from the avalanche that followed a false threat of fire, as the local media reported in their day.

At its peak, it employed 6,100 people and turned huge profits back to Trump.

But the opening of other establishments in nearby states - Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New York - marked the beginning of the city's decline, where there were once 13 casinos, and today only nine.

The generalization of online sports betting and the economic crisis of 2008 dealt a severe setback to this leisure and business model, and the old-fashioned Trump Plaza was not spared from ruin.

It closed in 2014, but not without filing a bankruptcy file in 1991 among other attempts to restructure the business.

Atlantic City doesn't lift its head.

Threatened with bankruptcy five years ago due to the casino crisis, the closure of the premises due to the coronavirus last year left 27,000 people on the street, before a dropper reopening.

A study by the Brooking Institution analysis center on the impact of the pandemic in metropolitan areas established in March that New Jersey city would be the third worst hit in the country.

The Trump Plaza, which will leave a large lot clearly recyclable, had become a threatening and dangerous shell, from which pieces of concrete and sheet metal were detached, explained in December the mayor, Democrat Marty Small, when announcing the demolition and the charitable end of the failed auction, while he angrily recalled how Trump had mocked all his neighbors by abandoning their properties when he saw the crisis arrive.

A Trumpist version of

, Woody Allen's first film, and

fittingly

more tacky.