“I felt they should have been able to make a deal,” Trump told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “This battle has been going on for two years.”īut this shutdown is different: it involves a casino built by the Republican candidate for president, who took time out from the campaign trail to lament its demise. “We held the line against a billionaire taking from us!” said Marc Scittina, a food service worker at the Taj Mahal’s player’s club since shortly after it opened in 1990.

Picketers affixed an anti-Icahn poster that they had signed to the casino’s main Boardwalk entrance door. Nearly 3,000 workers lost their jobs, bringing the total jobs lost by Atlantic City casino closings to 11,000 since 2014. The sprawling Boardwalk casino, with its soaring domes, minarets and towers built to mimic the famed Indian palace, shut down at 5:59 a.m., having failed to reach a deal with its union workers to restore health care and pension benefits that were taken away from them in bankruptcy court. Donald Trump opened the Trump Taj Mahal casino 26 years ago in New Jersey, calling it “the eighth wonder of the world.”īut his friend and fellow billionaire Carl Icahn closed it Monday morning, making it the fifth casualty of Atlantic City’s casino crisis.

Taj mahal casino atlantic city closing