The big story of today is, despite all the pro-Trump caravans around the country, including here in southern Oregon this afternoon, we now know why the Trump campaign is allegedly broke. The president has always stonewalled his tax records, but now they have been found out. He has paid little to no taxes AT ALL in the past fifteen years, and none at all in the past ten years. This "billionaire" who might not have ten cents to his name has also suffered huge financial losses.
I thought this year's "October surprise" was RBG's death, but it appears this massive bombshell is really it. Trump's supporters will go to the ends of the earth and beyond to support him, and it may be way too soon to call this election for Biden, but the proverbial fat lady is starting to warm up to sing her aria:
Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.
He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.
As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.
The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.
You KNOW his taxes will be brought up in Tuesday's debate, if it still happens.
Meanwhile, Trump is crying "fake news."
Nice to know I pay more in taxes than the president. And those refunds!!!! He always rants about "socialists," but it is clear he supports socialism for the rich. Or the pretend rich, as it were.
Just where all the Trump campaign money is going is worth an investigation, too.
Trump even tried to exploit his ailing daddy, who was no saint himself.
Donald Trump was facing financial disaster in 1990 when he came up with an audacious plan to exert control of his father’s estate.
His creditors threatened to force him into personal bankruptcy, and his first wife, Ivana, wanted “a billion dollars” in a divorce settlement, Donald Trump said in a deposition. So he sent an accountant and a lawyer to see his father, Fred Trump Sr., who was told he needed to immediately sign a document changing the will according to his son’s wishes, according to depositions from family members.
It was a fragile moment for the senior Trump, who was 85 years old and had built a real estate empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He would soon be diagnosed with cognitive problems, such as being unable to recall things he was told 30 minutes earlier or remember his birth date, according to his medical records, which were included in a related court case.
Now, those records and other sources of information about the episode obtained by The Washington Post reveal the extent of Fred Trump Sr.’s cognitive impairment and how Donald’s effort to change his father’s will tore apart the Trump family, which continues to reverberate today.
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