Twin River's president, George Papanier, was a finance executive at the Trump Plaza casino hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, earlier in his career, and Twin River's chief marketing officer, Phil Juliano, also lists experience at a Trump casino on his resume.įor decades, Trump, whose Atlantic City casinos were his first big venture outside New York - they became some of his biggest failures when they suffered bankruptcies in the early 1990s - has spoken of casinos built by tribes as fraudulent ventures: 'the biggest scandal ever,' he said. But the tribe's site is about 18 miles from Rhode Island, and that state's politicians aren't keen to have a new competitor go up against their two casinos, both of which are run by Twin River Worldwide Holdings, a public company with strong Trump ties. If the federal government decreed the land to be the tribe's sovereign property, the casino would be exempt from many taxes.īut some residents of the town where the casino would be built sued over the project, and after the tribe broke ground, a federal judge sided with the residents, ruling that, because of the history of that parcel of land, the feds didn't have the authority to guarantee it to the tribe.

The Mashpee Tribe seeks to build a casino in southeastern Massachusetts. On the surface, the matter is a simple dispute over who wants a casino and who doesn't. And even though this president has a four-decade record of slamming Native American casinos as scams that pose unfair competition to other gambling enterprises, notably his own, Trump's decision to weigh in on a measure that had strong bipartisan support seemed unusual for a chief executive who doesn't like to be bothered with the little stuff.īut a closer look at House Resolution 312 and the favour it would do for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe reveals a sprawling network of Trump-related interests, from the National Enquirer to a Rhode Island casino company - a small but strikingly intricate example of the ways this president's business dealings, personal bonds and political alliances can complicate and colour the ordinary doings of government.

Presidents don't usually get involved in local tiffs over a planned 900-room casino hotel. The president was against the bill, he wrote, because it was 'unfair and doesn't treat Native Americans equally!' Eyebrows have been raised after US President Donald Trump came out against House Resolution 312.

Trump casino built around house