Entertainment Resorts (Trump resigned as chairman four days before the bankruptcy filing).” [Press of Atlantic City, 8/10/15] TRUMP DIDN’T BELIEVE HIS CASINO BUSINESSWOULD HAVE A NEGATIVE IMPACT ON HIS 2000 CANDIDACY Trump Did Not Think That Being In The Casino Business Would Be A Liability To His 2000 Presidential Run. KING: “Do you think being in gaming could hurt you?” TRUMP: “No, I own casinos. I'm the largest, by far the largest person in Atlantic City, which is actually doing more business now than the entire Las Vegas strip, which surprises people when they here it. We are actually doing more business. And I have a big percentage of that market.”…KING: “But do you think the term ‘gaming,’ which is gambling, will hurt you?” TRUMP: “No, I don't think so at all. And certainly, my business, again, in New York I'm very large, to put it mildly, and in Atlantic City I'm very large. And I'd obviously have to do something with a trust where I put my businesses into a trust at least during this term.”[Larry King Live, CNN, 10/7/99] GOLF COURSES 2009: TRUMP PAID $13 MILLION FOR A LOWES ISLAND GOLF COURSE, CHOPPED DOWN 400 TREES AND INSTALLED A HISTORICALLY- INACCURATE PLAQUE COMMEMORATING A NONEXISTENT CIVIL WAR BATTLE In 2009, Donald Trump Bought A Golf Club On Lowes Island In Virginia Where He Chopped Down Over 400 Trees And Renamed The Club After Himself. “When Donald J. Trump bought a fixer-upper golf club on Lowes Island here for $13 million in 2009, he poured millions more into reconfiguring its two courses. He angered conservationists by chopping down more than 400 trees to open up views of the Potomac River. And he shocked no one by renaming the club after himself.” [New York Times, 11/24/15] Donald Trump Installed A Plaque On His Golf Course Denoting The Purported Location Of The “River Of Blood” Where“Many Great American Soldiers, Both Of The North And South, Died” During The Civil War, But Civil War Historians Said Trump’s Description Of The Location’s Historical Significance Was Wrong. “Between the 14th hole and the 15th tee of one of the club’s two courses, Mr. Trump installed a flagpole on a stone pedestal overlooking the Potomac, to which he affixed a plaque purportedly designating ‘The River of Blood.’‘Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot,’ the inscription reads. ‘The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.’’ … ‘No. Uh-uh. No way. Nothing like that ever happened there,’ said Richard Gillespie, the executive director of the Mosby Heritage Area Association, a historical preservation and education group devoted to an 1,800-square-mile section of the Northern Virginia Piedmont, including the Lowes Island site. ‘The only thing that was remotely close to that,’ Mr. Gillespie said, was 11 miles up the river at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff in 1861, a rout of Union forces in which several hundred were killed. ‘The River of Blood?’ he added. ‘Nope, not there.’ Mr. Gillespie’s contradiction of the plaque’s account was seconded by Alana Blumenthal, the curator of the Loudoun Museum in nearby Leesburg. (A third local expert, who said he had written to Mr. Trump’s company about the inscription’s falsehoods and offered to provide historically valid replacement text, insisted on anonymity because he did not want to cross the Trump Organization by disclosing a private exchange.)” [New York Times, 11/24/15] • Donald Trump Disputed Historians’ Contentions That A Plaque He Placed On His Golf Course Contained Factually Inaccurate Claims About Civil War Events At That Location — “How Would They Know That? … Were They There?” “In a phone interview, Mr. Trump called himself as‘a big history fan’ but deflected, played down and then simply disputed the local historians’ assertions of historical fact. ‘That was a prime site for river crossings,’ Mr. Trump said. ‘So, if people are crossing the river, and you happen to be in a civil war, I would say that people were shot — a lot of them.’… ‘How would they know that?’ Mr. Trump asked when told that local historians had called his plaque a fiction. ‘Were they there?’ Mr. Trump repeatedly said that ‘numerous historians’ had told him that the golf Confidential Page 66