Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. stock certificate 2004 (President Donald Trump)

Great vignette of 1990's Donald Trump with Atlantic City hotels and casinos in the background. Printed signature of Donald Trump as Chairman. Issued and not cancelled.  Dated 2004.

Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts owned and managed the Trump Plaza, Trump Marina, and Trump Taj Mahal casino hotels in Atlantic City, NJ. Two of the properties are on the famed Atlantic City Boardwalk, while Trump Marina is on the waterfront. They also owned the Indiana Riverboat, a casino at Buffington Harbor on Lake Michigan. In 2004, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts explored various options for restructuring its debt, amid speculation that it might file for bankruptcy. A possible arrangement with Credit Suisse First Boston was not completed because the bondholders rejected it. After the 2004 bankruptcy filing, the company changed its name to Trump Entertainment Resorts.

Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc. is a gaming and hospitality company that owns and operates the Trump Taj Mahal hotel and casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, United States. Formerly known as Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, it was founded by Donald J. Trump, who was chairman of the board of directors until his resignation in 2009. Bob Griffin is currently Director and Chief Executive Officer. Trump is no longer on the company's board, but was given stock in the company for its use of his name and likeness.

Donald Trump began purchasing properties along the Atlantic City boardwalk in the early 1980s and received a gaming license from New Jersey's Casino Control Commission on March 15, 1982. He had planned to build his own casino on the boardwalk, but was stalled on the project when Mike Rose, then CEO of Holiday Inn and Harrah's approached him to manage construction of a Holiday Inn Casino-Hotel. It opened in May 1984 and two years later Trump bought out Holiday Inn's shares in the property and renamed it the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.

In 1985, Trump purchased the nearly-complete Atlantic City Hilton hotel and casino property at the Atlantic marina from Hilton Hotels for $325 million. The hotel chain sold the property after its application for a gaming license was turned down by the CCC. Trump originally opened the property as Trump's Castle Hotel Casino, and later renamed it the Trump Marina.

In 1988, Trump purchased the unfinished Taj Mahal property from Resorts International for $230 million after negotiations with Merv Griffin in which the two men divided the assets of the failing company. The casino, at the time the largest in Atlantic City, would eventually cost almost $1 billion by the time it opened in 1990. Trump completed the project using junk bonds, a decision that hurt the company afterward as the gaming industry struggled in a recession and interest rates became unmanageable.

In 1995, Trump established Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts (THCR) as a publicly traded company, granting it ownership of the Trump Plaza and the under-development Trump Casino in Gary, Indiana. The following year, THCR bought the Trump Taj Mahal at a valuation of $890 million, and bought the Trump Castle from Trump for $486 million (including $355 million in assumed debt).

In 1996, the company opened Trump World's Fair, a casino adjunct to the Trump Plaza. The World's Fair was closed in 1999, with plans to replace it with a larger resort.

President Donald Trump - a controversial history

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American real estate developer, television personality, business author and political candidate. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization, and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump's career, branding efforts, lifestyle and outspoken manner helped make him a celebrity, a status amplified by the success of his NBC reality show, The Apprentice.

Trump is a son of Fred Trump, a New York City real estate developer. Donald Trump worked for his father's firm, Elizabeth Trump & Son, while attending the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and officially joined the company in 1968. In 1971, he was given control of the company, renaming it The Trump Organization. Trump remains a major figure in American real estate and a celebrity for his prominent media exposures.

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021.

On June 16, 2015, Trump formally announced his candidacy for president of the United States in the 2016 election, seeking the nomination of the Republican Party. Trump's early campaigning drew intense media coverage and saw him rise to high levels of popular support. He handily won over the unliked Hillary Clinton in 2016 and, in 2024, he won by large margins over the politically lost Kamala Harris. The 2020 election remains a Trump-claimed controversy for corrupted voter rolls, illegal alien voting, foreign-owned voting machines with overseas servers, an unusually high vote count for Biden (more than more-popular Obama), and Joe Biden's apparent dementia. Trump never made a public announcement but his 2021 administration is apparently investigating after the voting machine companies were sold to US investors.

The rest is history as two-time president to Make America Great Again.