Trump’s taxes show why he is desperate to stay in office
Opinion by
Columnist
September 28, 2020 at 12:16 p.m. CDT
During
the first presidential debate in
2016, Hillary Clinton speculated that Donald Trump was keeping his taxes secret
because he didn’t want Americans to know that “maybe he’s not as rich as he
says he is,” “maybe he’s not as charitable as he claims to be,” and maybe “he’s
paid nothing in federal taxes.”
The New
York Times just confirmed that
Clinton was right — and reveals why President Trump has tried so hard to keep
his taxes secret. It somehow managed to obtain Trump’s tax returns, which show
that he is either a terrible businessman or a massive tax cheat — or possibly
both. He managed to pay no federal income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15
years — and only $750 in 2016 and 2017 — by claiming vast losses from his
business empire. That $750 figure is a killer because it’s a number that middle-class
Americans can understand. As a just-released Biden campaign ad points out,
that’s far less than the taxes paid by the average teacher, nurse or
firefighter.
The
latest Times story neatly complements a previous Times scoop in 2018 which
showed that, far from being a self-made man, young Trump received $413 million
from his father — and squandered it in a series of failed deals. The new
article picks up the story, showing that Trump received another windfall from
“The Apprentice” and related deals — and then promptly squandered that, too. By
July, the newspaper reports, the supposed billionaire had no more than $873,000
in securities left to sell.
The
Times article supports the assumption that Trump ran for president in 2015 — a
race he never expected to win — to revive his flagging fortunes. That is, in
fact, what Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, told Congress last year: “Mr.
Trump would often say this campaign was going to be the greatest infomercial in
political history. . . . The campaign for him was always a marketing
opportunity.”
Once
Trump unexpectedly won, the marketing opportunities only increased for the most
unethical president in our history. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Washington (CREW) just released a report showing that Trump has 3,400 conflicts of interest.
He has profited from his presidency by making repeated visits to his own
properties with his vast entourage in tow, while lobbyists, political groups
and foreign governments have also paid to stay at his properties.
Trump
tried to secure even more lucrative paydays by announcing that the Group of Seven summit would
be held at his Miami-area golf resort and reportedly instructing the U.S.
ambassador in London to pressure the British government to move the British Open golf
tournament to his Scottish resort. Both schemes blew up in Trump’s face,
raising the issue of why someone as rich as he claims to be would engage in such
blatant profiteering. Now, we know the answer. Trump is not just less wealthy
than he claims; he is up to his eyeballs in debt.
The
Times reports that Trump is on the hook for $421 million in debt, much of which
is coming due soon. As former FBI agent Josh Campbell points out, that much
debt “disqualifies most people from obtaining a government security clearance,”
because the U.S. government “views this as a vulnerability and a point of
leverage for foreign adversaries seeking access to classified information.”
The
Times account did not specify who Trump’s debtors are and sheds little light on
his business connections with Russia. It did note that he made more money from
holding the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013 — $2.3 million — than from
any other pageant. That money came from the Agalarov family, which is close to
Russian President Vladimir Putin, and which lost $10 million on the
transaction.
This
should serve as a reminder that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III refused to look into
Trump’s financial dealings with Russia, which Trump said was a red line for him.
That investigation still needs to be conducted. But even the bare facts
revealed by the Times show why both former FBI agent Peter Strzok and
former director of national intelligence Daniel Coats suspect that (as Coats
told Bob Woodward) “Putin had something on Trump.”
And
Putin isn’t alone. The Times shows that Trump made millions of dollars during
his presidency from licensing deals in places such as the Philippines, Turkey
and India, rendering him vulnerable to pressure from the strongmen in power in
all of those countries. Indeed, former national security adviser John Bolton
said that Trump’s decision-making on
Turkey was motivated by Trump’s business interests. That is a shocking
corruption of U.S. foreign policy.
Will
any of it matter? It’s true that the Times’s revelations are unlikely to move
Trump’s devoted supporters to vote for Joe Biden. But they do disrupt Trump’s
ability to get his message across with only 36 days left in an election that he
is losing.
The
Times has done an impressive job of getting the truth out, and now it is up to
the voters to decide whether they want to reelect a flimflam man. The Times
account makes clear that Trump is desperate to stay in office in no small part
because he needs to profit from the presidency — and to avoid the risk of
prosecution for tax fraud and other possible crimes.