Trump Is Banned from Operating Casinos in Vegas, Claims Harry Reid

Donald Trump may own the Trump Hotel Las Vegas, but Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says that the billionaire businessmen wouldn’t be allowed to offer gambling on his property.

Speaking with the Washington Post, Reid claims that Nevada denied Trump a gaming license when he applied for one, and this is why his property doesn’t offer casino games.

“I may not be an expert on a lot of stuff, but I’m an expert on gaming licenses,” said Reid, who used to head the Nevada Gaming Commission. “You can’t have filed 14 bankruptcies, cheat people out of stuff. In gaming circles, if somebody does something bad once, you can’t get a gaming license. He’s done something bad his whole life.”

Reid’s assertion that Trump was denied a gaming license isn’t true since the real estate mogul did obtain a Nevada gaming license in 2004.

Trump has never exercised his option to use the license, instead concentrating on the hotel itself and amenities. But Reid insists that Nevada wouldn’t let him use the gaming license if he chose to build a casino now.

According to the Huffington Post, Reid reiterated his attack against Trump and how he wouldn’t be allowed to run a casino, given his history of mismanaging the ones he owned in Atlantic City.

“[Trump] applied for a license a number of years ago in Nevada and was a ive owner. He got one,” said Reid. “It was just perfunctory. If he applied for a license after what he did in Atlantic City and what he has done since, he couldn’t get a gaming license in Nevada.”

Huffington also points out that Reid has developed a reputation as a mudslinger, who sometimes forgoes facts when attacking opponents.

One example includes when he claimed that GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney hadn’t paid taxes in 10 years. Reid couldn’t produce any evidence on the matter, only saying that his information came from an anonymous investor in Bain Capital.

Given that Reid is a Democrat and Trump is the GOP Presidential nominee, we can only take the Senator’s words with a grain of salt.

But what is clear is that Trump did a poor job of running his Atlantic City casinos, losing millions of dollars of investors’ money. This is especially bad when considering that Trump owned casinos in the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, when the industry was otherwise prospering.

He also stiffed small businesses that helped furnish his casinos on his way out of Atlantic City, hiding behind bankruptcies and courts instead of paying up.