Once you stop crying, you have to laugh:

Just 26 months ago, Donald Trump filed a lawsuit to have his name taken off of the two Atlantic City casinos that still bore his name.

It was August 2014. Trump was still called a "real estate baron," not a presidential candidate. Trump Plaza (now long gone) and the Trump Taj Mahal (which gave up the ghost Monday) were still operating, if unprofitable.

"I want it (my name) off both of them," Trump told the Associated Press at the time. He'd already sold 90 percent of his stake in the gaming halls.

In his Superior Court lawsuit, Trump's lawyers wrote that the Taj and the Plaza were in "an utter state of disrepair." He was was distressed that this would harm the "Trump" trademark.

After all, the Trump name "has become synonymous with the highest levels of quality, luxury, prestige and success," the filing continued.

Funny how the lawsuit didn't list "refinement" and "impeccable good taste" among the brand's attributes.

As if he hadn't damaged his trademark enough already, Trump's lewd remarks on the "Access Hollywood" tape unearthed Friday likely made the brand into a pariah. Sponsors and licensees are running from Trump faster than from an athlete who was caught doping.

There's one place, though, where all vestiges of Things Trump have disappeared. The name no longer sits atop any operating building in Atlantic City. (It was still "Trump Taj Mahal" at Monday's bitter end because Trump dropped his litigation in 2015.)

So, laugh at how Donald Trump devalued his own brand in 2015 and 2016 far more than a few dirty rugs or some peeling plaster on two gaudy buildings could ever do.

But, cry for the 3,000 people who lost their jobs Monday because neither Trump nor his Taj Mahal successors could keep Atlantic City's biggest casino healthy, even after four others had closed.

With the Taj shutdown, there's a lot of finger-pointing between corporate raider Carl Icahn, who bought the hotel out of bankruptcy, and the labor union whose workers went on strike this summer.

The decline of the casino city and the devaluation of the Trump name are parallel and intertwined, but differences can be instructive.

Atlantic City's woes have lots of fingerprints besides those of Trump, Icahn and Local 54. A city government couldn't stop spending when times got bad. State government wavered between lavishing and withdrawing aid. Market conditions required a casino "right-sizing" sooner than it actually occurred. The bones of Atlantic City's non-gaming assets were stripped when gambling taxes were used instead to shore up the casinos' immediate environs.

Conversely, Mr. Trump has only Mr. Trump to blame if Trump Collections dress shirts and ties now sit lonely in clearance bins.

Resets are overdue for both the city and the candidate. If it's too late for "The Donald" brand, good minds working in concert hopefully can perform one more miracle rescue for Atlantic City.

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