Millions of Americans work hard and pay their taxes. So why doesn't Donald Trump pay his? pic.twitter.com/WLSzIz0ewG— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 3, 2016
Hillary Clinton Asks: “What Kind Of ‘Genius’ Loses $1 Billion In A Single Year?”
On the campaign trail in Ohio today, Democratic presidential candidate brought up the Sunday talk show defense by Donald Trump’s surrogates regarding the weekend revelations of Trump’s 1995 tax return.
“What kind of genius loses a billion dollars in a single year?” Clinton asked.
Watch below.
.@HillaryClinton on Trump: “Here’s my question: What kind of genius loses $1 billion in a single year?” https://t.co/VLQiBPRjNG— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 3, 2016
Did Marla Maples Leak Donald Trump’s 1995 Tax Return?
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As political junkies and pundits wonder who might have leaked Donald Trump’s 1995 tax return to the New York Times, some folks have started looking in the direction of Trump wife number two, Marla Maples.
Since she was married to the Donald at that time, her name is on the joint return, and state laws in New York and Connecticut allow taxpayers to release returns to outside parties with only one of the filers signatures.
Medium has more details:
It’s also unlikely that she would be violating her confidentiality agreement with Mr. Trump by leaking these returns. I spoke to two lawyers that specialize in family law and both told me that they have never seen a restriction around tax returns in a prenup or settlement agreement. They have seen such restrictions when it comes to financial statements, investment records but it would be hard for Mr. Trump to demand that Ms. Maples own tax information be kept private. If Ms. Maples did indeed leak these returns, it would also absolve the Times of any criminal or civil penalties.
Despite the fact that the Trump campaign said that the Times is “an extension of the Clinton campaign”, they’re not (after all they broke the email server story in March of 2015). The Times had these returns for ten days and took their reporting on these returns seriously — even going so far as hiring tax experts to analyze the returns. They sought a comment from the Trump campaign, they spoke to the accountant who prepared and signed the returns.
So it would be highly unusual for them to not contact Ms. Maples about the tax returns given that her name is on all of the returns and her signature is on the New Jersey return. Yet the Times, in their story, does not indicate that they contacted Ms. Maples. Even if she didn’t return their calls or emails, they would still indicate that they reached out to her and had not heard back.
When Donald Trump Criticized President Obama For “Only” Paying 20.5% Tax Rate
In the aftermath of the New York Times’ bombshell article showing Donald Trump probably paid no personal income taxes for 18 years, it’s amusing to take a walk down Twitter Lane with the Trumpster.
Remember that time he criticized President Obama for “only” paying a 20.5% effective tax rate?
Now we find out Trump pays a 0% income tax rate. That means 0% for our military, 0% for our veterans, 0% for roads, bridges and schools.
And yet, Trump will rant about the poor status of our infrastructure and airports, etc.
Things that make you go “hmm….”
Rudy Giuliani: Trump Is A Genius For Losing $916 Million
Watching Rudy Giuliani on CNN’s “State of the Union” this morning was an adventure in twisted logic.
CNN’s Jake Tapper attempted get straight answers from Giuliani regarding the latest Trump bombshell concerning his income taxes via the New York Times, but to little avail. Giuliani appeared a bit wild-eyed at times trying to get his approved “talking points” across.
Watch below.
Trump Tax Returns: Business Failures May Have Kept Him From Paying Taxes For 18 Years
An anonymous source has mailed three pages of Donald Trump’s 1995 income tax returns to a reporter at the New York Times.
The pages indicate that Trump declared a $916 million loss that year in connection to the “mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan,” the newspaper reports.
Trump lost almost $1 billion in one year running casinos??? Think on that for a minute.
According to the NYT, the loss could have allowed Trump to avoid paying federal income taxes up to $50 million for the next 18 years.
Trump’s campaign issued a statement which read, in part:
“Mr. Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required. That being said, Mr. Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes, along with very substantial charitable contributions.”
“Mr. Trump knows the tax code far better than anyone who has ever run for President and he is the only one that knows how to fix it.”
The New York Times has obtained portions of Donald Trump’s 1995 income tax returns that indicate he may not have paid any federal income taxes for almost two decades.
The three pages from Trump’s tax returns, which were mailed to the NYT by an anonymous source, showed that Trump declared a $916 million loss that year due to “mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan,” the newspaper reports.
The loss would have allowed Trump to avoid paying federal income taxes on up to $50 million for each of the ensuing 18 years, the NYT notes. One of Trump’s lawyers has already threatened to sue the NYT for publishing the returns, but his campaign appeared to confirm the validity of the newspaper’s report in a statement.
“Mr. Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the statement said. “That being said, Mr. Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes.”
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the NYT’s scoop is the fact that the person who mailed the pages from Trump’s tax returns to the newspaper listed their return address as Trump Tower.
Bill Maher On Donald Trump’s “Basket of Inexplicables”
In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher examines Trump’s surrogates, and questions whether this cast of characters would be fit to serve in a Presidential administration.
Esquire breaks down the “who” and “why” of the Donald’s inner circle.
Why would Trump surround himself with these idiots? Well, as Trump once said, “Always be around unsuccessful people because everybody will respect you.”
It seems that Trump takes his own advice. “That does explain Rudy Giuliani,” Maher joked. It also explains the pastor who, when interviewed by CNN, declared the conversation “off the record” only after the reporter questioned him about his bogus claims that he graduated college.
And then there’s Marco “taco truck on every corner” Gutierrez. Or Katrina “Obama started the war with Afghanistan” Pierson. And let’s not forget Trump’s lawyer, Michael “Says who?” Cohen.
Donald Trump: Did He Say It Or Not?
Democrat Hillary Clinton continues to use Donald Trump’s own words as an effective campaign tool.
Donald Trump may lie, but the tape doesn’t. pic.twitter.com/NWciAXZrKW— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 29, 2016
Donald Trump Falsely Slut-Shames Former Miss Universe
Donald Trump started his Friday morning by slut-shaming Alicia Machado, falsely claiming she has a sex tape.
You’ll recall Machado is a former Miss Universe that Trump called “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” when he felt she gained weight during her reign in the 1990s.
Her name became a presidential talking point when Hillary Clinton brought up her treatment at the hands of Trump near the end of the first presidential debate.
Since then, Trump surrogates have hit the political talk shows with Trump campaign-issued talking points directing supporters to trash Machado.
Apparently, those attacks weren’t sharp enough for the Trumpster as he took to Twitter at 5:14AM urging his followers to “check out [her] sex tape and past.”
From Think Progress:
Those tweets would be strange enough if they were accurate, but they don’t even rise to that standard. As the Daily Beast reported, “The alleged ‘sex tape’ Trump urged followers to ‘check out’ is non-explicit footage from a Spanish reality-TV show in which the Venezuelan model supposedly had sex with a fellow participant.” A separate Daily Beast report notes that “there does not appear to be any evidence suggesting the existence of professionally made pornography starring Machado.”
The unproven notion that Machado is a porn star was pushed this week by the Infowars website run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. In a post published Wednesday, InfoWars called Machado “literally a porn star.” Their evidence? A link to a screengrab of a porn video featuring a woman who looks vaguely like Machado.
Trump Spokesperson: Unscientific ‘Polls’ Are Better Than Real Polls
Right Wing Watch reports on Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson’s appearance on a radio show today defending the accuracy of unscientific, online polls.
She also hints that Hillary Clinton does better in fact based polls because news organizations have a “vested interest” in Hillary becoming president.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson took a page from her boss and touted Trump’s performance in post-debate online polls that have no scientific accuracy whatsoever. After conservative talk show host Joe Pags told Pierson that “news organization polling” is tilted against Trump because media outlets “have some sort of vested interested in getting Hillary Clinton elected,” Pierson said that the scientific polls conducted by media firms are “skewed.” As proof, she cited the fact that the CNN sampled more Democrats in its poll of debate viewers. Three other scientific polls also found that most people thought that Clinton won the debate.
Pierson vigorously defended the accuracy of voluntary, unscientific online polls: “When you look at the online polls, these are people who are, like I said, not engaged in the day-to-day, 24-hour news cycle, watching cable news all day every day, these are just people. If you’re looking at Time magazine, if you’re on another website and they’re doing a poll and you vote in that poll, by the way, to the tune of over a million votes in some of these polls, that’s important, because those aren’t the people who are in it one way or another, a lot of those people are just engaging.”
You’ll note what Pierson doesn’t explain is the fact that with unscientific “widget” polls, a couple of thousand followers can “vote, refresh, vote, refresh, vote, refresh” to the tune of hundreds of thousands of votes, making it appear Trump had more support than he actually has.
As I reported earlier this week, Trump followers posted instructions on a Reddit board encouraging Trumpers to do just that.