ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Hillary Clinton attacked Donald Trump's business record in a fiery speech from this town's famed boardwalk on Wednesday, arguing that the real estate mogul profited from his casinos here before exiting and leaving workers high and dry.
It was perhaps the most stinging assault yet from the presumptive Democratic nominee on her opponent's business dealings, delivered in a highly symbolic setting: the struggling casino strip that still bears Trump's name, even though he no longer owns hotels here. After a local businessman who claimed to have been ripped off by Trump introduced her, Clinton mocked the faded Trump name along the boardwalk and called her opponent's record "shameful."
"You can just make out the word 'Trump' where it used to be written in flashy lights," Clinton said, referencing the shuttered Trump Plaza. "According to The Donald, isn't he supposed to be some kind of amazing businessman? So it's fair to ask, since he is applying for a job, what in the world happened here? His excuse for all this failure is that Atlantic City just went down hill, it's not his fault. Don't believe it."
The former secretary of state assailed the likely GOP nominee for a string of bankruptcies at his Atlantic City properties, as well as a trail of accusations from small-business owners that he never paid his bills for the work they did for him. She warned voters that Trump has promised to "do for the country what I did for my business."
The speech was meant to resonate in a town that has seen hard times. Thousands of people were laid off in 2014, when four of the city's 12 casinos closed -- none of which were owned by Trump at the time. Employment has rebounded since then, along with gambling revenues, but Atlantic City still has an unemployment rate above 7 percent, compared with a national rate below 5 percent.
"He always rigged it so he got paid no matter how his companies performed," Clinton said of Trump. "He walked away with millions. That's what you need to know about Donald Trump -- it's not about what he can build, it's about how much he can take."
Last month, The New York Times published an examination of Trump's record in Atlantic City, deeming his casino empire "a protracted failure." The publication said Trump himself managed to profit even as his casinos made their way toward bankruptcy before the economic downturn here.
"Though he now says his casinos were overtaken by the same tidal wave that eventually slammed this seaside city’s gambling industry," the paper wrote, "in reality he was failing in Atlantic City long before Atlantic City itself was failing."
Clinton delivered her speech not far from the Trump Taj Mahal, which Trump declared "the eighth wonder of the world" when he opened it in 1990; that property was in bankruptcy proceedings a little over a year after the ribbon cutting and struggled for years, the Times reported. The Taj, which Trump has not run for years, recently went through another round of bankruptcy proceedings and is now owned by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, himself a Trump backer. Roughly 1,000 of the casino's workers are currently on strike, having recently lost their health care coverage amid the bankruptcy.
In a response to the speech, Trump said there was nothing wrong with taking his properties through bankruptcy, calling it a "commonly used practice" to restructure businesses. He also stood by his record in Atlantic City.
"I created thousands of jobs and made a lot of money in Atlantic City, which was what, as a businessman, I am supposed to do for my company and my family," he said in a statement.
Marty Rosenberg, who introduced Clinton before her speech, said his plate glass company got hosed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in its work on the Taj years ago.
"Donald Trump made a promise to me, to my family, and to the people of Atlantic City," Rosenberg said. "If you did a good job in a timely manner, you'll be paid an agreed-upon payment. This promise went unfulfilled… all while Mr. Trump went about his extravagant lifestyle without giving any of us a second thought."
On the boardwalk here ahead of Clinton's speech, there was debate over how much responsibility Trump should bear for the city's recent struggles. Patrick Yaeckel Sr., who lives in nearby Egg Harbor, said he doesn't fault Trump for Atlantic City's job losses.
"You can't say one person knocked out the whole city," said Yaeckel, adding that he admired Trump for his business successes.
"I do blame him for what's happened here," interjected Raymond Stone, an Atlantic City resident. "He ruined this town. He put a lot of people out of work, and this was before the economy crashed. ... Donald Trump would not be welcome in Atlantic City."
Jimmy Hamilton, a roofer on his way to pay his rent, said Clinton was on pretty solid ground with her overall argument about Trump's record in the city.
"He doesn't care about this town," said Hamilton, sporting an American flag bandana. "He's a bum, man."
USA Today recently published an investigation into claims that Trump didn't pay his bills in Atlantic City. The paper reported that many of the 3,500 lawsuits involving Trump over the years featured workers and business owners who said Trump stiffed them in one way or another. One Philadelphia cabinet maker claimed the Trump organization owed them $83,600 for work they did on Trump Plaza in the 1980s. The paper found more than 200 liens filed by contractors against Trump properties.
Maggie Boccia, 63, a retired schoolteacher who also lives in Egg Harbor, said she was appalled by the allegations that Trump didn't pay working-class people he owed money to. She noted that Trump has tried to remove his name from properties like the Taj once they were struggling.
"How many people didn't get paid, and he just walked away?" Boccia said. "He did a lot of bad things down here, and now he wants to take his name off of it. Look at what happened to this city."
Editor's note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.