Some of the commissioners, too, engaged in occasional harrumphing and finger-wagging, logging into the record words like “incomplete,” “confusing,” “disappointing” and “disheartening,” sounding at times like precursors to GOP lawmakers’ mostly toothless tsk-tsking toward Trump these past few years. Dodd-opted for instead was a different form of oversight, enacting stricter monitoring, mandating a regimen of daily, weekly and monthly updates and reports from Trump and his upper-tier staff. What the casino commissioners-Perskie and Vice Chair Valerie H. Just as there are people who are empowered to stop him now-members of Congress, in particular Republicans-there were people who could have stopped him then.

Today, more than a generation later and a year out from the 2020 election, Trump in the White House is staring at a fundamentally similar scenario-the growing probability that his fate will be decided by a group of regulators, albeit of a different, more high-profile ilk but nonetheless obligated to determine whether he can remain in office long enough for voters to decide whether he deserves a second term. | AP Photo/Chaarles Rex Arbogast AP Photo/Mike Derer Perskie, the chairman of the commission, stated at a meeting in May, “is in serious peril.” He and his fellow commissioners had a choice to make: renew Trump’s licenses and hope his bottom line improved-or strip him of them and risk delivering a debilitating blow to Atlantic City’s wheezing economy.ĭonald Trump shows off his Taj Mahal Casino Resort on its opening day, Apin Atlantic City. In addition to Trump’s dismal individual straits, the cash flow at his debt-riddled casinos wasn’t enough to make them profitable as the industry sagged in the throes of a recession.

And the regulators had overwhelming reason to question his financial stature and overall fitness to continue. No licenses would have meant no casinos would have meant less collateral for the banks as Trump tried to dig out from under billions of dollars of debt. He needed the licenses to keep his casinos open to have any shot at staving off personal bankruptcy and a potentially permanent reputational stain.

Trump was in his mid-40s and only four years earlier had published the pure brand boost of The Art of the Deal, but now he was in trouble.

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