Maybe you can help me understand this Trump thing. The most recent
pernicious revelation he has had to defend is his failure to pay taxes
for a couple of years in the '90's. It didn't have any appreciable impact
on him when he called Rosie O'Donald ugly or when he claimed that Megan
Fox was bleeding from "somewhere," but chauvinist boors have to have
someone to vote for too. And when he accused President Obama and Hillary
Clinton of founding ISIS, well, he had to consider the "birther" movement
he had spawned. I mean he couldn't very well have exposed the idiocy of
so many people and then just left them out there to be ridiculed; they are
his people. And calling a former Miss Universe "Miss Piggy" because she
gained some weight and "Miss Housekeeping" because because she is
hispanic, that's just epithet slinging, like "Little Marco" and "Lying
Ted"...just some good clean fun in Trump world. Those things and all the
other outlandish things he's said are just good clean fun compared to this
tax thing, but even this seems not to be sticking to him. It seems that
he is the "teflon Donald." His only defense is that it's good business to
pay as little taxes as possible, which runs parallel to his claim that
bankruptcy is the way business is done, and that's alright. What else
would you expect from Donald Trump. But he is also claiming credit for
it...not just defending it but claiming it as a credential.
Trump says that he paid so little in taxes--nothing for as many as 18
years--because he is smart...because he knows the tax code better than
anyone else. Set aside the fact that a guy who claims to be everybody's
friend wants many of us to pay more taxes under his tax plan just because
we didn't get rich declaring bankruptcy like every good businessman
should. Ignore the fact that during his bankruptcies he paid himself off
from the assets of his corporations and left his corporate investors high
and dry and lots of small businessmen who had helped him build his casinos
and refurbish his hotels didn't get paid, and sometimes even got ruined so
that Trump could live in Trump Tower. Albeit he called such conduct on
his part good business because he profited from it, he did admit it
outright without making the claim that it was a credential on his resume.
And of course, the list of sow's ears he has turned into silk neckties
made in Bangladesh with nothing more than a flash of his silver tongue is
virtually endless, but never before has he said something as outlandish as
his current claim that he paid so little in taxes because he was so
smart and knowledgeable about the tax code. He makes it seem like he
bundled the wife and kids off to Mara Lago for the weekend and did his
taxes himself. But, other than when he was signing them, my guess is
that Donald Trump has never seen one of his tax returns close up. And
other than when he signed it, he never saw the one that has recently been
disclosed...the one that shows this genius losing almost a billion dollars
in a single year...he never saw this one either. I would say that the
only thing he did was write the check, but he didn't even do that. There
was no check.
Forgive me for stating the obvious, but while there may be things Trump
does for himself, they probably don't number more than the count of his
fingers and toes, and that includes eating, gesticulating as he does at
his rallies for exercise, and holding his own, if you know what I mean.
Doing his taxes isn't among them, nor is studying tax law. And you can
be sure that he didn't lose 900 odd billion dollars just so that he could
use a particular provision of the tax code...diminishing returns and all
that, you know, and diminishing returns are something he seems to know
plenty about given his history in hotels and casinos. The bottom
line--another thing about which Trump probably knows something (I'll
concede that he probably knows how to add and subtract)--is that just as
Al Gore did with the internet, Donald Trump's accounts of his
accomplishments are habitually self-serving. He has short changed
many...maybe thousands. He has told lies...again maybe thousands, and
that is just in the past few months. He exaggerates with alacrity and if
his middle initial weren't "J" I would have assumed that his middle name
was braggart, or maybe blaggart if you happen to be of British extraction
and braggart doesn't quite capture your contempt. Anyone with an open
mind would certainly see that Trump's claim to be smart because he thought
up a way to escape taxes is as ill-conceived as is most everything else he
says. Still, Trump voters will just not be deterred from their folly.
What's that saying they use today, "haters gonna hate?" Well, if you are
one, Trump's your man, and proof of his lack of integrity isn't going to
change that.
Your friend,
Mike
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