Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
@BarackObamahttp://1.usa.gov/HFZJKH Do as I say not as I do.
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
Mar 28, 2013
@conservativeJT
@bluejoni
@realDonaldTrump
Trump is an American that will pay more taxes in one year than you pay in your entire life.
Despite a 2016 campaign pledge to the
contrary, Donald John Trump is the only president in modern history not to
reveal his income tax returns, claiming that he would as soon as his audit risk
was over. The IRS says there is no reason for not revealing those returns, but
Trump still refuses. From Trump University and five other major bankruptcies, Trump
has extracted money over the years from consumers, students and investors,
choosing instead to leave them high and dry through insolvency. Insolvency from
a man who keeps claims to be so veritably successful and rich? A man who
directly or through his corporate holdings has been involved in over 3500
lawsuits, more than any other US billionaire? A man who’s declared income
suggests he is nowhere near the business magnate he claims to be? What’s real
and what’s Trump fabrication?
Indeed, the New York Attorney General
is delving into records from the “Trump organization” (there is no central
“Trump organization,” by the way) for massive financial improprieties. Mostly,
false information and valuations provided to banks to secure real estate loans,
overstating the same values that he carried on his tax returns as massive
loss-generators. Lots of felonies in that alone. State and federal. Back when
he built Trump Tower, and through his attorney Roy Cohn who was also a Mafia
mouthpiece, the Donald elected to go with a concrete-heavy (vs steel-heavy)
design, even though the real estate world in NYC is and was quite aware that
the mob totally controls(ed) the cement business in the city. For those in the
know, the Donald would never have done that without an unholy alliance with the
Mafia. But taxes just may be his Achilles Heel.
“Over the years, President Donald Trump’s
Twitter feed has featured messages slamming others for not paying taxes, bragging
about how rich he is, criticizing
those paying taxes overseas, and even claiming he pays ‘more taxes in one year than you
pay in your entire life.’
“It all reads differently now after The New York Times
obtained decades of Trump’s tax
information and found that he ‘has been more successful playing a business
mogul than being one in real life.’… Perhaps nowhere is the disconnect between
his public message and apparent private financial situation more stark than in
the messages Trump has tweeted out over the years…
“The key finding in
the Times report was that he paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he
won the presidency and another $750 in 2017. He also paid no income taxes at
all in 10 of the previous 15 years….
“For the record, Trump has denied the report. ‘It’s
totally fake news,’ he said Sunday
[9/7] evening and added Monday morning [9/28] that he ‘paid many millions of
dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation &
tax credits.’” Yahoo! News, September 28th. Hey,
Mr. Trump, if you want to refute the Times, there is only on way to do it:
release your tax returns for the last decade! Trump paid far more in
taxes to foreign governments than he did in the US: “$15,598 he or his companies paid in Panama, the $145,400
in India and the $156,824 in the Philippines.” Yahoo! News.
One way or another, you can pretty much expect
Trump to find a way to be pardoned for federal crimes. He could try and pardon
himself or resign and let minion-Pence do the dirty work for him. Not sure if
that will work. But if those numbers remotely reflect what he did on his New
York State tax return, where the President cannot issue a pardon, expect a
sentence that Mr. Trump will not like. Will he throw his kids and their spouses
under a bus to avoid jail time? If he pardons his immediate family, they lose
the ability to take the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, and if they
lie later, they will be committing new felonies well past daddy-Trump’s ability
to pardon them. You can easily see why Trump needs to be reelected: to
avoid losing control of the federal process that could send him and/or his kids
away unless he can stifle the investigation.
“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.
“The New York Times has obtained tax-return data
extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of
companies that make up his business organization, including detailed
information from his first two years in office. It does not include his
personal returns for 2018 or 2019…
“Mr. Trump has written off as
business expenses costs—including fuel and meals—associated with his aircraft,
used to shuttle him among his various homes and properties. Likewise the cost
of haircuts, including the more than $70,000 paid to style his hair during ‘The
Apprentice.’ Together, nine Trump entities have written off at least $95,464
paid to a favorite hair and makeup artist of Ivanka Trump…
“One Trump enterprise that has
been regularly profitable, and is a persistent source of concern about ethical
conflicts and national security lapses, is the Mar-a-Lago club. Profits there
rose sharply after Mr. Trump declared his candidacy, as courtiers eagerly joining
up brought a tenfold rise in cash from initiation fees — from $664,000 in 2014
to just under $6 million in 2016, even before Mr. Trump doubled the cost of
initiation in January 2017. The membership rush allowed the president to take
$26 million out of the business from 2015 through 2018, nearly triple the rate
at which he had paid himself in the prior two years.” New York Times,
September 27th.
Trump appears to be over-borrowed with
repayment for massive debts looming and payable, much during the next four
years. It could get embarrassing. “[The] tax records
show that Mr. Trump has once again done what he says he regrets, looking back
on his early 1990s meltdown: personally guaranteed hundreds of millions of
dollars in loans, a decision that led his lenders to threaten to force him into
personal bankruptcy… This time around, he is personally responsible for loans
and other debts totaling $421 million, with most of it coming due within four
years. Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the
unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.”
NY Times. This data suggests that not only is Trump a terrible businessman and
a tax cheat, but he might not even be close to being the billionaire he claims
to be. On September 28th, Trump tweeted: “I have very little debt compared to
the value of assets,” he tweeted. Seriously? Prove it!
The sad
reality is that Trump has inflicted massive pain on the very base-constituency
that needs healthcare and social services the most. The ever-fouling air they
breathe and the water they drink face environmental deregulation… as climate
change-induced wildfire and droughts in some areas, flooding and virulent
tropical storms in others decimate their homes, farms and businesses. He’s played
his base for fools and they are so loyal, they let him get away with it. The
rest of us should not be so forgiving. Vote like you life depends on it. It
does.
I’m Peter Dekom, and it is
deeply sad that the man in the most powerful job in the world is not just
incompetent, he is an out-and-out con artist/criminal.
Addendum following the 9/29 presidential debate: Listening
to the deconstructed, constant interruption (mostly, but not all, by Trump), listening
to what highly-credible federal officials have already determined in direct
contradiction to the President’s position, listening to a litany of repetitious
Trumpian falsehoods, I was disheartened. Trump’s assault on the election
process itself, however, sent quivers of fear down my spine. He rather clearly
was already disavowing both the process and the results. We may indeed be on
the brink of another civil war.
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