Back in 1993, Donald Trump saw the proposed Foxwoods casino in Connecticut as a threat to his Casinos in Atlantic City. People in New England and upstate New York might prefer to go to a closer casino in Connecticut than take the longer trip to New Jersey.
So he objected in the halls of congress as the casino would be owned by a Native American tribe.
The Pequots were set to operate the Foxwoods Casino and High Stakes Bingo hall, and Trump saw a threat not only from that casino but from all Indians who run casinos.
At one point in his testimony, the soon to fail casino owner told members of the House subcommittee to
“Go up to Connecticut and you look. They don’t look like Indians to me. They don’t look like Indians to Indians.”
When he was asked after the meeting what Indians look like, he replied, “You know. You know.”
He went on to claim,
“It will be the biggest scandal ever, the biggest since Al Capone … . An Indian chief is going to tell Joey Killer to please get off his reservation? It’s unbelievable to me”.
He claimed members of the tribe would be grabbing at the money brought in like greedy little kids grabbing at slices of a pizza.
The purpose of the subcommittee was to learn more about how Indian casinos are policed and regulated, but Trump, who we now know was in the middle of losing over a billion dollars through poor business transactions, introduced patronizing racism.
Although he had prepared a seven-page statement to read, he decided,
“I had a long and boring speech. It was politically correct and something that would have gotten me into no trouble whatsoever”,
but he chose, as he usually does, to go off script.
Among his claims he stated, “Nobody likes Indians as much as Donald Trump”, just as no one loves the GLBT Community or (your group’s name here), but “There is no way Indians are going to protect themselves from the mob. This is gonna blow.”
While he complained,
“You have a group of Indians in Connecticut, I’ve heard $300 [million] to $400 million [in profit]. They don’t pay taxes. Why not distribute the money to other Indians? I believe this tribe has 300, 400 members (he actual number was 280). Do you think it’s appropriate for 300 [members], who lucked out with a location between New York and Boston, shouldn’t give some of the money out to others?”
he was one of 200 hundred financiers in the 1980s who profited with leveraged buyouts in New York City, but didn’t spread the wealth.
He now brags about this and how he played the “game”.
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Jump ahead to November 2017 when Trump was president.
Connecticut sought Interior Department approval to allow the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes to open a new casino in East Windsor. The Connecticut law authorizing the new casino required federal approval of the compact amendments before the casino could go forward.
With the Interior Department declining to allow this there was the possibility for a lawsuit against the Interior Department.
The casino would be the only full casino run by an Indian tribe off tribal land or on land held by the federal government in trust for a tribe, making them subject to the Indian Gaming Regulation Act.
The Trump administration has tightened the rules on Indian gaming with all applications being reviewed by the Department of the Interior and not the bureau of Indian Affairs, reversing the Obama administration practice of approving “land into trust” applications that allowed tribes to build off-reservation casinos.
Recall that in the past Trump had filed a lawsuit against the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act that claimed the law gives advantage to “a very limited class of citizens,” American Indians, at the expense of other citizens, to prevent the Mashantucket Pequot tribe from opening its casino.
He is now in a position to get revenge.
But it appears his animosity is not limited to the Pequot tribe, but to any tribe who might do better with their planned casinos than he did with his failed ones.
For 12,000 year, the Mashpee Wampanoag have inhabited Southeastern Massachusetts and were the people who helped the Pilgrims survive when they arrived in Plymouth.
Last year Trump decided to strip the Mashpee Wampanoags of their federal tribal recognition.
Among other things, this put a halt to the tribes proposed casino in Southeast Massachusetts.
Congressman Bill Keating of Massachusetts proposed H.B. 312 that would reinstate their federal designation and allow them to build a casino on their land, but the day before the legislation was to be voted on, Trump sent out a tweet,
“Republicans shouldn’t vote for H.B. 312, a special interest casino Bill, backed by Elizabeth (Pocahontas) Warren. It is unfair and doesn’t treat Native Americans equally!”
Just as his 1993 objection to the Pequot casino included racism, this tweet also included it.
Add this to his having opened lands historically held by Native Americans as sacred to mining and drilling, while aggressively granting pipeline rights through such lands as well so that corporate profits overrule religious beliefs, and it would seem that his claim that “Nobody likes Indians as much as Donald Trump”, only holds if he doesn’t want revenge for their having been more successful at something than he has been.