Donald Trump’s supporters rushed to
defend him Sunday following reports that he may have avoided paying any
taxes for the past 20 years.
Trump neither confirmed nor denied the reports.
The article in Sunday’s New York Times
capped a disastrous week for the Republican presidential candidate,
focusing renewed attention on his steadfast refusal to release his
income tax returns.
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, a
key Trump surrogate on the campaign trail, called the reports proof of
the New York tycoon’s “absolute genius.”
“You have an obligation when you run a
business to maximize the profits and if there is a tax law that says I
can deduct this, you deduct it,” Giuliani told ABC News, suggesting
investors in Trump’s company probably would have sued him had he done
otherwise.
Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s vanquished Democratic presidential primary foe who now supports her, took the opposite view.
“If everybody in this country was a ‘genius,'” the Vermont senator told ABC, “we would not have a country.”
Trump tweets again
While not admitting to paying little or
nothing in taxes, Trump boasted on Twitter that what he called his
deftness in fiscal and business dealings is one of his greatest
strengths.
“I know our complex tax laws better than
anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix
them,” he wrote after The Times story appeared.
The real estate mogul declared a loss of
nearly $1 billion on his 1995 income tax return, enabling him to
legally avoid paying taxes for almost two decades, according to
documents obtained by the New York Times.
He has repeatedly refused to make his
tax filings public, the first major party presidential contender to do
so since Richard Nixon in the 1970s.
Trump has said he will release his tax returns only after the federal authorities complete an ongoing audit.
However, tax officials — without
confirming or denying that Trump’s tax filings are under review — have
said being under audit does not prevent their release.
A lawyer for Trump said publication of
Trump’s tax returns is illegal because he did not authorize it, and
threatened “appropriate legal action” against The Times, the paper
reported.
During last week’s acrimonious first
presidential debate, Clinton suggested that Trump is hiding “something
terrible” by failing to produce his tax returns.
“Maybe he doesn’t want the American
people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in
federal taxes,” she said during Monday night’s debate.
She prompted this Trump retort: “That makes me smart.”
Numerous reports have suggested he has
used high-pressure tactics to convince officials in New York and
elsewhere to give him tax breaks and other hugely favorable conditions
in his deals.
He is also reported to have taken
massive, albeit legal, tax breaks on failing businesses, earning a
fortune while shareholders and investors swallowed large losses and
contractors went unpaid.
Democratic Senate minority leader Harry
Reid called Trump a “billion-dollar loser” on Sunday, urging lawmakers
to pass the Presidential Tax Transparency Act, which would require
candidates to release their tax returns.
“Despite losing a billion dollars, Trump
wants to reward himself with more tax breaks on inherited wealth while
stiffing middle-class families who earn their paychecks with hard work,”
he said in a statement.
Reid added that Americans “deserve to know who has leverage over this man who wants to be president.”
‘Out of control’
Trump’s latest campaign trail bombshell
follows an abysmal few days for the bombastic billionaire, Clinton’s
campaign manager Robby Mook said on Sunday.
“Trump has had a really bad week: He failed in the debate,” he said in an interview with barely suppressed glee.
“He has spun out of control subsequent
to that. Insulting (Venezuela-born beauty queen Alicia) Machado. His 3
am tweet storm,” he added, recounting other Trump controversies that
dominated headlines last week.
“You know, his campaign is spinning out.”
In the latest poll showing a boost for a
newly energized Clinton this week, an ABC News/Washington Post survey
released on Sunday said 53 percent of Americans saw Clinton as the
winner, compared to 18 percent for Trump.
Nearly half of respondents said he got
facts wrong during the debate and a third that he lied outright, while
his unpopularity rating grew to 64 percent in the same poll, compared to
53 percent for Clinton.
Trump spent most of last week embroiled
in controversy over his abusive comments about Machado, who won the Miss
Universe pageant — owned by Trump at the time — in 1996.
He doubled down this week, including in
his predawn Twitter rant Friday with more insults about Machado — a
tirade Clinton said proves he is “temperamentally unfit” for the
presidency.
Trump went on the attack again on
Saturday, mocking the former first lady for a recent bout with pneumonia
and raising questions about her loyalty to her husband, former
president Bill Clinton.
His running mate Mike Pence is set to
debate his Democratic counterpart Tim Kaine on Tuesday. But Americans
are expected to pay scant attention, with the focus firmly on Trump with
little more than a month to go before the November 8 election.
0 comments:
Post a Comment