A GoFundMe campaign has kicked off for former First Lady and State Secretary Hillary Clinton to press the button that will demolish the now empty Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
“Hillary press the button”, a hashtag below a page of the same name reads. As of Friday, 25 December, only $100 of the $745,000 requested has been raised, the donation page says.
The page to allow Clinton, who lost the 2016 vote to Donald Trump, to press the button was organised by a person in Santa Cruz, California.
Earlier this month, the city’s mayor, Marty Small Sr. announced an auction to implode the building, promising that proceeds will go directly to the youth service organisation Boys and Girls Club of Atlantic City.
Small made up his mind to auction off the rights to push the button, which is currently expected to happen some time in February, claiming Trump’s legacy there boils down “to taking advantage of bankruptcy laws, some people, making money and leaving”, he was cited by Breaking AC as saying.
“So it’s extremely important we do something worthwhile and there’s not a better organisation than the Boys and Girls Club of Atlantic City”, the head of the city said.
After 14 bids, the price for the demolition had reached $62,500. Yet Small referred to himself as “a pretty ambitious guy”, who seeks to raise no less than a million dollars.
The Bodnar's Auction sale, which goes live at 1:00 p.m. EST on 19 January 2021, offers potential bidders "a once in a lifetime opportunity to bid on the right to push the button to implode Trump Plaza”.
"For several years it has been sitting empty and now is the time to end an era and replace it with something new. We are selling the experience to push the button to implode Trump Plaza”, the auction page details.
"This will be done remotely and can be done anywhere in the world as well as close to the Plaza as we can safely get you there!"
Trump Hotels and its successor, Trump Entertainment, which included the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino and Trump Marina Hotel Casino, all in Atlantic City, filed for bankruptcy for the first time in late 2004, and then again in early 2009, when Trump finally departed as chairman. The company’s woes weren’t over, however. It surrendered to Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code a third time in 2014 becoming a subsidiary of Icahn Enterprises, run by financier Carl Icahn.