Over the weekend, The New York Times revealed that they had obtained decades worth of tax returns from President Donald Trump and his businesses. The documents revealed startling details, like that Trump had paid just $750 in personal income taxes in both 2016 and 2017, and in 10 of the 15 years before that, he paid no personal income taxes. He’s propelled these low taxes with claims of huge losses, which he also used to claim a tax refund of a staggering $72.9 million, which he received but is now under federal investigation. During an appearance on Fox & Friends on Monday morning, Donald Trump Jr. — who helps run the family business while his father is in the White House — had a meltdown over the issue.
Donald Trump Jr. is on Fox this morning defending his father over the NYT tax avoidance story: "Of course the NYT does this, they put out a selective picture of all of these things the day before a debate." pic.twitter.com/0JXHCZs9zw
— The Recount (@therecount) September 28, 2020
Trump Jr. began by running through all of the steep taxes that the family business has apparently paid, in an effort to make Trump’s nearly non-existent personal income tax payments seem less conniving — but that tax refund of over $70 million tells a markedly different story. The president’s personal income tax returns aren’t just some kind of afterthought following the supposedly great and upstanding Trump Organization paying their dues to the federal government. Those personal tax returns are the vehicle for an absolutely staggering level of self-enrichment to the tune of over $70 million in tax refund money!
In other words, there’s clearly some sort of scheming going on here. Even Trump being absolutely terrible at business might not account for the sheer size of the losses that he has claimed.
Trump Jr. angrily ranted:
‘Of course The New York Times does this, they put out a selective picture of all of these things, the day before a debate to try and give someone like Joe Biden an attack line, they come up with one or two catchy soundbites, and that’s the game. We’ve seen it; we saw it two weeks ago with the debunked claim about the military, we’ve seen it for four years about the Russia hoax. If only they spent as much time looking for maybe, I dunno, Hunter Biden’s tax returns, and the Biden crime family issues, where Hunter’s taking money from a known associate of Vladimir Putin.’
Watch Trump Jr.’s comments in the video below:
Hunter Biden is not running for president, and while it’s true that he has been in business arrangements with questionable associates, there is no evidence that Hunter’s father, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, is involved in any significant way with Hunter’s questionable business behavior. President Trump claimed recently that Joe knew everything about Hunter’s financial entanglements, but the evidence for this claim is just not there — period.
Trump Jr.’s assertion that a recent report that Trump had referred to fallen American service members as “losers” had been “debunked” is not true, according to any reasonable understanding of the term. Neither is it true, of course, that the Russia scandal is a “hoax.” As a family, the Trumps just seem to be consistently relying on ignorance on the part of their targets in their efforts to get ahead.
