Donny’s Last Casino
A Reckless Gambler Plays One Final Hand
They gathered on a cold, wintry day in Atlantic City, New Jersey, not far from the ocean. It was already an abnormally frigid day; the weather would worsen later when a frontal wave of low pressure developed off the Middle Atlantic coast and brought heavy snowfall. The small crowd didn’t care.
They sat on chairs on a wooden deck between the ocean and a tall, grey high-rise building. The chairs were lined up against a railing, facing the building. The spectators adjusted their coats and shuffled in their seats as the wind picked up. They were not the only ones gathered for the show. Numerous other observers sat in their cars parked throughout the area. A flock of seagulls had the closest view of all. They were perched on the grey building. The time was 9 a.m. on Tuesday, February 17, 2021.
A few minutes later a horn sounded and the seagulls flew off in formation. At the same time there was a low rumbling sound. The tower, a monument to one man’s ego and testament to his incompetence, had come to the end of its life.
“The former Trump Plaza casino was imploded after falling into such disrepair that chunks of the building began peeling off and crashing to the ground,” wrote Wayne Parry of the Associated Press
“A series of loud explosions around 9 a.m. rocked the building,” he added, “which started to collapse in a wave from back to front until it plunged straight down in a giant cloud of dust that enveloped the beach and Boardwalk. Overall, it took the structure less than 20 seconds to implode.”
A video report from Fox 29 in Philadelphia captured the moment of demolition. It also showed something else. The spectators on the deck, which included the mayor of Atlantic City, were located between the demolition and the ocean. When the smoke from the explosion slowly made its way toward the ocean, it enveloped the spectators, who rushed off the deck, coughing and covering their faces.
The early days of 2021 are among the most memorable in American history. They gave us the election of a new president, the second impeachment of the previous one, a bloody insurrection in the nation’s capital, and, with the Trump Plaza implosion, a metaphor.
Pundits jumped on the obvious-as-a-pie-in-your-face metaphor. Chris Riotta of The Independent called it “The end of an era — and in some ways, the perfect metaphor.”
Numerous commentators viewed the demolition as a metaphor for the end of Trump’s business career, and perhaps his political one as well. “The remains of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino are scheduled for implosion a few weeks after Joe Biden’s January 20th, 2021 Inauguration date,” wrote Maran Caballo of The Science Survey, “an ironic end to Donald Trump’s infamous Atlantic City saga.”
“It’s not the only part of his former life that has been destroyed since he decided to run for president six years ago,” noted Matt Bevan of the Australian Broadcasting Company. “His years as New York real estate tycoon and star of reality television, welcomed by elites to high society events, appear to be over.”
“Donald Trump spent the last four years committing numerous crimes big and small, the most serious one being his incitement of the violent mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6,” reported Bess Levin in Vanity Fair. “Luckily,” she added, “this week has fortuitously brought with it some much-needed catharsis, in the form of a Trump property being literally blown to smithereens.”
Bevan, in Australia, did not embrace the catharsis. Citing “the inability of the American system to resist a charismatic populist with authoritarian tendencies,” he mused, “I have been wondering, if he had the chance, would he do it all again? For many observers of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the answer is obviously ‘yes’”.
The commentators in 2021 got the metaphor wrong. The demolition of the Trump Plaza was not a metaphor for the destruction of Trump’s political and business careers because the building was not a stand-in for Trump; it was a stand-in for America. Trump was given the chance to “do it all again,” and his second act is an exercise in demolition. Jack Murphy, writing for The Architect’s Newspaper, saw a metaphor in Trump’s demolition of the East Wing:
“The images of the rubble, some even with American flags in the background or foreground, offer a perfect metaphor for what many believe the Trump administration is doing to the country,” he wrote. “Basically, taking a wrecking ball to tradition and then assembling a slapdash new build.”
Trump’s legacy is a debris field. Justice Department: broken. FBI: demolished. Rule of law: eviscerated. American cities: traumatized. Alliances: shredded. The Constitution: defiled.
America is not the only victim. Trump’s embrace of tyrants like Vladmir Putin, Victor Orban, and Kim Jong-Un, his betrayal of Ukraine, his reckless and abusive tariffs and his Iranian escapade, reduced the United States’ influence and boosted China’s. Trump not only threatens the rule of law in our country; he has disrupted an international system of laws, norms, and alliances that helped keep the world mostly peaceful and prosperous for eight decades.
“The tragedy of this moment is that the United States still has, in principle, the advantage: China has no alliance network and few real friends,” writes Michael Clark for the Center for American Progress. “But the Trump administration has undermined this advantage to such a degree that Europe no longer trusts Washington, and trust once lost is not easily rebuilt.”
Trump is running his last casino. The rest of world sits in their deck chairs, waiting for the horn to sound, the birds to flee, and the American century to collapse in a spasm of smoke and rubble.