Having received copies of two decades worth of Donald Trump’s tax returns, returns he’s kept secret and fought aggressively in court to keep hidden, the president who styles himself as an uber-wealthy businessman was revealed to have claimed to the IRS that while he’s making millions of dollars every year, he’s losing more money than he’s making. The returns indicate that Trump is either a terrible businessman or he’s committing tax fraud, and The Lincoln Project, a group of Republican political strategists and Never Trumpers, have been trolling him over it since the story went public.
So a .00000000032% tax rate. https://t.co/OX9QMAtkLg
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 27, 2020
Drip, drop. pic.twitter.com/be7soq3WZS
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 27, 2020
Raise your hand if you pay more taxes than supposed “billionaire” Donald Trump. 🖐
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 27, 2020
Donald Trump’s taxes: pic.twitter.com/YL8TTDZICt
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 27, 2020
. @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/zG01AFItF6
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 27, 2020
. @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/wZItynr9TH
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 27, 2020
He pays next to nothing in taxes and then he uses our money to go golfing.
Did I get that right?
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 27, 2020
He will lose.
He will go.
The IRS always gets their man. https://t.co/YKlHsEN3Rd
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 27, 2020
The Times has not yet released the returns, although they plan to do so, but the first analysis of those returns were released on Sunday night. They showed that Trump has paid all of $750 a year in federal taxes and, for at least 10 of the past 15 years, has paid nothing at all.
According to The New York Times:
‘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.’
In court, Trump’s former attorney and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, testified that Trump often inflates the value of his properties in loan applications and devalues them for tax purposes, which constitute both bank fraud and tax fraud. Either Trump is lying about how much money he has, in which case he may absolutely be charged with crimes after his presidential term has ended, or he’s just not what he sold himself to be. Either way, it’s yet another look at a president for whom the law isn’t really all that important.
Twitter had a lot to add to the tweets by The Lincoln Project. Read some of their comments below:
