Clinton floated a number of theories that could explain why Trump wouldnât release his tax returns, not the least of which being the possibility that he did not pay federal income taxes. She pointed to a few years of returns that have been seen by others â when he was applying for a casino licenses â that showed no federal income taxes were paid.
âThat makes me smart,â Trump interjected.
This particular example is why Iâm good with him not giving up the tax returns. He could have gave up that paperwork ages ago and still had enough leverage to harp about those e-mails. However due to pride, heâs willing to let others create a story about what those returns look like.
âThere is always an accident on the road to âTrumpvilleâ.â
None of his aides are willing to go on the record saying that Trump has paid ANY federal income tax at all.
I think Cuban is dead-on target with his assessment. In addition to showing that he lies about his wealth â shocking! â they contain multiple bombshells.
The âloanâ wasnât the only thing he inherited from his daddy that was very small.
then all those returns represent at this point is some sort of âtreasure mapâ. Observers have an idea of what âTrumpcoâ finances are, thanks to the Farenthold articles. At this point, those returns will just reveal what he told the federal government (again heâs not being arraigned on anything tax related) during the âaudit yearsâ.
who would?
Anyone who wants to still have a political career (Conway, Pence) arenât going to âsmokeâ away whatever cred defending a possible tax evader.
Thatâs another thing about last night that got me about him. One end: Trump paraphrase âIâm the smartest man that has ever lived and you canât handle that.â while on the other hand, he kept adding to the narrative that his tax returns contain some damaging information that would be gold to his competitors.
These examples, and heâs said them before, are the clearest proof we have that his supporters are stone cold militantly ignorant. Heâs telling them, I got away with my scams and paid no taxes, and you schlubs earning $30K have to pay taxes - LOSERS! And they love him for his âhonesty.â Also Hillary email something GRR! I fear he really could shoot someone and not lose any support. Letâs hope it doesnât come to that.
If only I had stopped procrastinating and fixed that damn time-machine out in the garage. The odds you could have gotten that heâd still be standing after one of these statements would have been bet-the house good.
Frankly, I think more than anything else, this is where he fell down on the debate stage, figuratively speaking. Even many of the people Trump has suckered in the GOP that favor him, could see what a sleazeball he is by his own callously blurted out statements. Hell, theyâre probably thinking, âI have to pay taxesâ, âI donât have a rich daddy to start a businessâ, âif someone didnât pay me like they promised for work I had done, Iâd be pissed tooâ. Or even, âI lost my retirement money when that shit went down 8 years agoâ. Whereâs the guy who says heâs fighting for the white working class who loves âthe poorly educatedâ? Even they can see he blew it with those remarks. It doesnât take an Einstein to figure that out.
And if Hillary had said that last night, heâd have whipped it out to show everyone she was wrong.
To a Trump supporter, this set of claims makes perfect sense:
- Our country is a shithole, especially where blacks live
- Our airports are so bad weâre a third-world country
- Rich people (like Trump) and big corporations (like TrumpCo) should pay less in taxes
- Trump paying zero taxes makes him smart
So weâre a third-world shithole which Trump will âmake great againâ by cutting taxes and being smart by not paying any taxes himself. Jesus even Romney understood that his low, low tax rate was a liability in the general election, not a bragging point!
The amount of willful ignorance it requires to believe all that crap is mind-boggling to me. Youâd have to avoid so many just clearly obvious facts in order to maintain the unreality bubbleâŚ
Excellent recap.
These five points prove conservatism to be a lie, a âprincipledâ movement that in fact does not exist to promote itâs declared values.
âNow, as far as the lawsuit, yes, when I was very young, I went into my fatherâs company, had a real estate company in Brooklyn and Queens, and we, along with many, many other companies throughout the country â it was a federal lawsuit â were sued,â Trump said. âWe settled the suit with zero â with no admission of guilt. It was very easy to do.â
First, that is a lie: his was the only company on that suit. There were many other lawsuits around violations of the Civil Rights Act, obviously, and many of them dealing with real estate. But that doesnât make Trumpâs case any less disgusting. He was clearly discriminating in who he would rent to, and the smoking gun evidence of the âCâ for âColoredâ being on all the applications handed in by african americans proves it.
If it was âeasy toâ âsettle the suit with ⌠no admission of guiltâ then they would have done it before the suit was filed. The fact that the suit was filed means that the Trumps did not willingly correct the issue on just a complaint and needed the pressure of a Federal lawsuit to get them to the table. As the ABC commentator characterized it, this was basically Trump bragging about how he paid off the Justice Department to get out of Civil Rights violations. There are only a few downsides to having a Federal lawsuit filed against you during those ânegotiationsâ about what you need to do to make right over the violation. One is that things get more expensive, but expense is nothing for the Trumps and the DoJ probably had less of a budget to work with than Trump Real Estate. The other is, as my mother used to say, âIt will show up on your record if one day you want to run for President.â
Well, here Trump is running for President. These things that he willfully allowed to be put on his record in his âyouthâ (all relative for a 70-year-old man I suppose) are rightfully coming up for review.
âWell, for one thing â and before we start on that â my father gave me a very small loan in 1975,â Trump said, âand I built it into a company thatâs worth many, many billions of dollars.â
Need we remind you: had Trump Sr just put that money in an S&P 500 index fund instead, that money would have been worth more like $20 Billion today, twice what Trump (without substantiation) claims his company is worth. And that would have been hands-down perfectly legal, unlike the many pond-scum tactics Donnie has had to take up to only underperform the stock market by 50% in that same time period.
But I get it. If you have a shiftless, sociopathic child, you pay a little extra to give them something to do. In the alternate reality where Trump Sr just set the moneys aside and told Donnie to live off the trust fund, how many women would Donnie have raped or murdered before being imprisoned for the rest of his adult life? Sacrifices like this, even worth $10 Billion, are what parents do to keep their kids on the straight and narrow.
Unfortunately, if you divided Einsteinâs IQ by two, added the jersey number of their favorite football players, multiplied it by the number of guns they own, it would still come out in double digits.