Welcome to Atlantic City, the resort town bankrupted by Trump

Before Hillary Clinton stepped up to the podium in Atlantic City yesterday, to speak about Donald Trump’s business record, Charlie Baker addressed the crowd gathered on the boardwalk — the spot where Trump Plaza used to be.

Baker asked the attendees, in reference to Trump, “Who wants him?”

After a pause for the crowd to finish their round of booing, he said, “No one. He just happens to be our boss.”

Baker has worked at the Trump Taj Mahal for 26 years and he certainly isn’t the only employee dissatisfied with the casino’s treatment of its staff. After contract negotiations for Trump Taj Mahal workers collapsed, around 1,000 individuals in the Unite Here Local 54 union began their strike Friday morning.

This all comes after The New York Times reported last month that Trump earned millions on his casinos in Atlantic City despite filing for bankruptcy and leaving his suppliers high and dry.

According to the report, Trump didn’t use much of his own money and managed to put his own debt onto the casinos while also collecting “millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments.”

Trump’s record in Atlantic City made it the perfect setting for Clinton to launch her first major attack on his business record and economic competence. Her aim: to make Atlantic City a metaphor for what will happen to America under President Trump.

When she got up to speak she called Trump “temperamentally unfit” and joked, “We need to write a new chapter in the American Dream, and it sure cannot be Chapter 11.”

Following Trump Taj Mahal’s bankruptcy in 2014, Carl Icahn kept the casino going and then became the owner this winter. Though Icahn later declined, Trump had named Icahn, the billionaire whose casino is now one of the last in Atlantic City to agree on a union deal, as the potential treasury secretary.

“He [Donald Trump] used to be our owner. He left us in bad times and stayed in good times. The bad times keep coming,” Baker told The Tab after Clinton’s event.

“It’s not ancient history,” Clinton said. “If he’s elected President, it’s our future and the future of hardworking people across America . . . What he did here in Atlantic City is exactly what he will do if he wins in November.”

Although the criticism centered on Trump, event speakers scorned New Jersey governor Chris Christie as well – one of Trump’s most important supporters.

Chairman of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee John Currier commented that New Jersey residents still haven’t returned to homes after 2012 hurricane Sandy.

“Let’s not forget what Chris Christie did,” Currier said.

Clinton stuck with a focus on the small businesses and workers for her jab at Christie.

She remarked, “If your governor would start doing his job instead of following Donald Trump around holding his coat, maybe we could really get New Jersey’s economy moving again.”

Words cannot take away the losses workers in Atlantic City have endured. A union deal could at least bring some hope. After the event, casino workers kept marching in a circle in front of Trump Taj Mahal with some beating drums, all chanting.

As Baker put it while on stage, “We continue to sacrifice for bad jobs.”