Dave Smith analyzes a New York Times report revealing Donald Trump's 15-year tax history, arguing the timing is a political maneuver that backfires by reinforcing Trump's "fake news" narrative. While the report highlights chronic losses and $750 in federal income tax for 2016-2017, Smith contends Trump paid millions in Social Security and Medicare, contrasting his business acumen with Biden's public service record. Through a libertarian lens viewing taxation as theft, he critiques positive rights claims and exposes hypocrisy among figures like Bernie Sanders, ultimately suggesting the media focus strengthens Trump's defense against the upcoming presidential debate. [Automatically generated summary]
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October Surprise Predictions00:04:25
Fill her up.
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You're listening to more of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
Of course, I am Dave Smith, flying solo for this episode.
No, Rob Bernstein.
I know what you're thinking.
It's probably his internet connection and he's losing a battle in the war to optimum.
Many of you are probably thinking it's the AIDS that got him again.
And some of you might be thinking it's a COVID flare-up.
But no, it's just Yom Kippur, and he's being a good Jewish boy and hanging out with his family, I imagine.
So flying solo for this one.
And, you know, sometimes when you do a show like this, when you're talking about what's happening in the news a lot, sometimes this happens, which is fucking annoying, is I have an episode scheduled for a time like this.
So about 24 hours from when I'm from right now, as I'm speaking, is the first debate between Joe Biden and President Trump.
And, you know, you're like, yeah, what am I going to fucking talk about?
You know, it's like by the time that, you know, tomorrow comes around, this will all be old news.
And, you know, it's like, yeah, I kind of already have previewed the debates.
There's not really that much to talk about.
And then sometimes you get handed a gift like I have in this case.
And there's been what's being dubbed a bombshell report by the New York Times, who have supposedly, allegedly gotten a hold of Donald Trump's tax returns for about 15 years.
So anyway, I figured we would talk about that a little bit for this episode.
I think it's an interesting development, to say the least.
I did want to mention, though, before we get into it, that I recorded yesterday the other half of The State of the Union with Ari Shafier.
So we did, we put out part one already.
I think we went for over three hours on that one.
We ended up going for like four and a half hours more yesterday.
He came over to my place and we recorded it.
So that should be out very soon.
It was an extra long state of the union for 2020, which warranted a long state of the union.
And if we have to do more than seven and a half hours for 2021, God help us.
It's been a really bad year.
So let's hope we go back to just a normal state of the union next year.
All right.
So the bombshell, as described by CNN and MSNBC, this New York Times report, the title, Long Concealed Records Show Trump's Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance.
And the subtitle is The Times Obtain Donald Trump's tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggles, proprieties, vast write-offs in audit battle, and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.
So let me start by saying this.
Okay, a lot of people have been asking me, is this the October surprise that you've been predicting?
No, it is not.
And you should know that already because it's technically not October.
This came a few days before.
No, I still think there's going to be some type of big October surprise.
Again, just a blind prediction.
It just feels like that kind of year.
It feels like something, something big is going to happen in October.
I don't know.
We'll see if I'm right about that, but this isn't it.
Taxation Is Theft Debate00:14:42
And I got to say, this I think will have little to zero impact on the presidential race.
I just don't think it'll matter for a wide range of reasons.
But, you know, however you feel about Donald Trump, you have to admit that the guy has some talent when it comes to politics.
I mean, you know, as I've said before, this is a guy who dipped his toe into politics and he didn't start by running for local office or running for, you know, like even mayor of a big city or even governor of an important state.
He started by running for president of the United States of America and he beat the Bushes and the Clintons on his first try.
So feel however you do about him.
You can, you know, hate him or think he's a buffoon or any of this other shit, but probably there's something there.
There's some degree of savvy for him to be able to have that type of success.
And Donald Trump is, he's basically already protected himself against this.
Now he's kind of gone back and forth.
But he said in 2016, when Hillary Clinton accused him of paying very little in taxes, he was like, yeah, that's because I'm smart.
And I think that's actually a fairly strong defense for all of this.
I mean, he can just say, yeah, of course, I'm using the system as best you can.
Who tries to pay more in taxes?
Right?
Like, I mean, to me, that's a fairly effective argument.
And actually, just a fair point in general.
You know, the truth is, even Bernie Sanders, even Mr., you know, the billionaires shouldn't exist because we should tax all of their money away from them.
And the rich people, the 1% and the millionaires and billionaires need to pay their fair share and all these things government should be providing.
What did Bernie Sanders pay?
He made a few million dollars and paid like 13% on it because he itemized his deductions to make sure he could pay as little as possible.
Because even a hardcore democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders doesn't feel like paying taxes.
He doesn't have to fucking pay.
No one does.
No one likes paying money to the government that's going to waste fucking 90% of it or spend it on shit that you disagree with.
So it's just, you know, to try to twist this into a bombshell, I think is quite a stretch.
And I think that Donald Trump has done a very good job of already protecting himself from this line of attack.
And when I say a good job, I just mean politically speaking.
Like he's already kind of said, like, yeah, look, this is why you got, this is the tax code.
This is the way it's designed.
He also has the benefit of running against Joe Biden, somebody who's been in the Senate for, I think, 85 years.
And he can just point at him and be like, well, I mean, if you have a problem with the tax code, you're one of the people who was in charge of this for decades.
I mean, something like four decades.
I was exaggerating with 85.
But, you know, so he, so he's, and he's very good at that.
Donald Trump is very good at kind of shifting, shifting maybe isn't even the right word, but he's very good at countering a lot of these attacks.
If you remember when Donald Trump, when the tape of him saying grab him by the pussies, when that thing came out, what he did was he basically, and it's one of the only times he's ever actually kind of apologized for something, but he was like, you know, I regret it.
It's not who I am or whatever.
It was locker room talk.
And he goes, believe me, I've known Bill Clinton.
He's said a lot worse.
So he right away, you know, is just very quick to find a way to kind of be like, oh, okay, yeah, you could say, I talk this way.
Guess what, Hillary?
Your husband also talks this way.
And he actually does shit.
You know, he's actually like rape chicks.
And, you know, and I mean, he may not have exactly said that, but he like had the women who have accused Bill Clinton of rape at the debate with him.
So he'll, my guess is he'll be, he'll be ready to go tomorrow night and he'll have a reasonable comeback for this.
He can just kind of point to how much money, you know, Joe Biden's made.
I mean, the truth is, right?
Donald Trump has been a businessman.
So the idea that a guy who's running businesses is trying to make as much money and pay as little out in taxes versus someone like Joe Biden, who I believe it came out that Joe Biden paid a couple million dollars in taxes.
Now, I don't know.
I haven't seen what Joe Biden's effective tax rate was, but Joe Biden's making a lot of money.
He's made a lot of money for a guy who has just been what they call a public servant for basically his whole life.
I mean, he was just a senator and a vice president.
They're not supposed to be raking in millions of dollars, but of course, many of them are.
And of course, there's the shadiness with Hunter Biden making all that money and shit like that.
So he's, it just seems to me it'll be easy enough for Donald Trump to make this issue a wash and not, you know, I don't think it's going to really damage him.
There's a, you know, it might, it seems to me, even so far, just feeling the temperature, what it's done is convince a lot of people who already hated Trump that this is horrible.
But that doesn't really have anything to do with the election.
Those people were already never Trumpers.
So I don't think politically this is a bombshell.
And I don't think that this is going to have a big effect on the presidential race.
That's just my feeling on it right now.
From the more philosophical point of view, I just think it's really something to watch people try to make the argument that it's somehow wrong to not pay taxes or it's somehow wrong to play the rules in order to pay as little as possible.
Now, from my perspective, I think that the government is a gang of criminals, and it should be a badge of honor to avoid giving them one cent more than you absolutely have to.
It should be a badge of honor to avoid giving them any money at all.
I mean, what, like, you know, it's basically, you know, saying Donald Trump for, I mean, like the 10 of the 15 years that they say he paid no taxes, they're, you know, he was fucking these were all in between the George W. Bush and Barack Obama years.
So it's basically him just saying he wasn't funding the fucking genocides.
Like, okay, to me, that seems like a great thing.
Like, that's noble if you can find a way to do it.
Yeah, don't fucking send money in to go destroy Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen.
You know, like, so I just don't, you know, I have no problem with it.
I saw, this is just more to the philosophical point, but I saw there was a guy who's a writer for Vice, I believe.
His name's Evan Rogers.
And he wrote this.
It's just a tweet, but it was something that kind of caught my eye because it really kind of goes to the heart of this philosophical disagreement.
But he said, when Bezos and Trump dodge taxes, they're stealing from the American people, period.
Full stop.
It's not, quote, smart to steal from your fellow Americans.
It's just theft.
And something interesting to me about that, right?
Because libertarians, like myself, are known for saying taxation is theft.
That's like the, you know, probably if you asked most people who know what a libertarian is and you said, what's the libertarian catchphrase?
That would probably be the one that comes up, taxation is theft.
But here you have this guy, a writer for vice, arguing the opposite.
He's arguing that not paying your taxes is theft and that you're stealing from the rest of us.
Like you're stealing from all of us.
And that's just an interesting kind of contrast right there.
Like which, okay, so which one is a more reasonable claim?
One person is saying that the government is stealing from you through taxation.
And the other one is saying that you're stealing from the government, but really he's more directly saying you're stealing from people if you don't pay your taxes.
So, I mean, think about that.
Now, when libertarians say taxation is theft, obviously we're not making the claim that legally it's theft, right?
I mean, every like everybody knows that you're not going to, like, I couldn't call the cops and ask them to go arrest the IRS agent who took my taxes last year.
The cops will laugh at me and hang up the phone.
Like, that's not the argument that we're making.
What libertarians are saying is that taxation is theft, or perhaps more specifically, extortion.
Because like, like, we're saying morally, that's what it is.
That if any other group of people did this, we would all look at it as theft or theft by extortion or whatever you want to call it.
Like, if any other group, if me and a few of my friends just got together and said to you, you're going to give me, you know, 40% of your income, or we're going to come fucking get you, you know, like fucking imprison you in my house, everyone would look at that and say this is theft or extortion.
And we're just saying that the same moral rules apply to the government.
Now, conversely, if you didn't want to give me and my friends that money, and I were to turn around to you and say, well, you're actually robbing from me and all my friends by not giving us your money, most people would laugh at that ridiculous assumption.
But just think about it like this.
If somebody starts a business, you know, whatever size business you want to think of it as, maybe a small business, mid-sized business, a big company, whatever.
But someone starts a business, they have the idea for it.
They invest money into it.
They invest their time, their blood, sweat, and tears.
They hire people.
They fucking go in every day and work on it and all that shit.
Who has a better claim to it?
That person who did that, who worked on it, invested in it and made a success out of it, or some dude who had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Like, which one of those claims is more reasonable?
Like, I don't even understand how this could be a debatable point.
And yet, more people agree with that.
More people do tend to agree because basically, that is the philosophy that underlines all positive right claims.
All claims that there's a right to anything that requires somebody else to do something for you is basically agreeing with that sentiment.
That actually, that person who had absolutely nothing to do with it has more of a claim to your property than you have.
That, you know, say Gas Digital, for example, just started by Ralph and Lewis.
And this was their idea.
They thought it through.
They both invested a sizable amount of money in this.
And both of them didn't make shit for the first few years of Gas Digital.
I mean, like, I was making substantially more than Lewis or Ralph was making off of Gas Digital for the first few years of Gas Digital, even though they own the company because I fucking, you know, didn't wasn't responsible for any of the investing, any of the liability, anything like that.
Now, who has a better claim to owning Gas Digital?
Whose podcast network is that?
Is it Lewis and Ralph's, or is it some dude in Michigan's?
Like, how could you even argue that there's a claim that that person that you're stealing it from him?
Not just that if he were to come and take it from you, that he's not stealing, but actually, you not sharing it with him is you stealing from him.
But just to be clear, that is the idea that runs throughout all positive rights claims.
So, like when Bernie Sanders says you have a right to health care or you have a right to housing or right to education, anything like that.
Well, if that's your right, then if someone else is not providing it to you, they've stolen your right away from you.
They're denying you your right.
Some, you know, doctor or teacher or fucking, you know, I don't know, whatever the right you're talking about is, if they don't provide you with that service, then that's they're denying you your right by the nature of a positive rights claim.
So, isn't it a weird, isn't it a weird, uh, like absurd and kind of evil way to look at the world that you are entitled, you're owed what someone else created, what someone else worked for, and put their lives, you know, put their energy and their, their, you know, like I said, blood, sweat, and tears into.
So, anyway, that's that's what's going on here.
And it's a lot of, you know, playing off of people's envy.
And it's a very like kind of, it's a very dark force that they're attempting to play with.
You know, like, even if you think about it, like, like, look, there's an argument to be made that it's unfair that people pay taxes.
Listen, if the numbers are true, which who the fuck knows, I've paid, I paid more taxes last year than Donald Trump paid, you know, in 2017.
I paid more taxes in 2017 than Donald Trump paid that year.
It's like, okay, you can argue that that's unfair, but what's really unfair about it?
Now, you like, you could say they've set up a system where rich, connected people can fucking, you know, get these like tax loopholes and deductions and all of this shit.
Harry Reid Tax Loopholes00:15:17
But like, okay, but what's really unfair about that?
It's unfair that there's a difference, I suppose you could argue, but what's unfair is that I get fucking raped.
That's the problem.
It's like if some rapist was like going around, you know, raping a bunch of women, and then there was one woman who was very powerful.
So he didn't want to rape her because he thought that might come back to get him, or he could, you know, if he didn't rape her, then maybe she'd like be nicer to him or something like that.
And you could sit there and be like, this is completely unfair.
And like, yeah, in some sense, it is.
But the problem there isn't that that woman's not getting raped.
The problem is that everybody else is.
That's what you, if you want to make this system fair, stop raping people.
That's the answer.
Not that the connected person should be raped harder.
That's not at all.
You get the point.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
So there's some other things that are interesting in the article.
So just by like the nature of the report's kind of interesting.
Okay.
So there's a few things.
And maybe this is something to keep in mind, right?
Trump's flat out denying this.
He's saying that this is not accurate.
These numbers are not correct.
And they're not looking at his tax returns.
Now, I keep this in the back of my mind, right?
Harry Reid, who was the Democratic whip in the Senate, who's the minority leader, I believe, at one point.
He's, you know, one of the high-level Democrats.
He's retired now, probably making lots of money, doing some fucking job for one of these big companies that he helped out when he was in there.
But he, and I have no information on that.
I don't actually know that that's true, but I bet I'm right.
But he, so he famously or infamously, at least to people who follow politics, he smeared Mitt Romney before Mitt Romney had put out his tax returns and said that Mitt Romney pays no income taxes.
That's, you know, like, it was a claim that he clearly didn't know, couldn't know, but he just made it with certainty.
It was like Mitt Romney is rich and he doesn't pay any fucking taxes.
And then Mitt Romney put out his tax returns and he paid lots of taxes.
I mean, he paid a higher marginal rate than Bernie Sanders paid.
And he's rich.
It was millions and millions of dollars in federal income taxes that he paid.
And they asked Harry Reid about this like months later after the election.
And they were like, hey, you know, you kind of lied about this guy.
Like you said he didn't pay any taxes, but it turns out he did and you were wrong.
So like, do you regret doing that?
And Harry Reid, with no hesitation, said, well, he's not president, is he?
So I just, after following politics for a while, it's not, you know, don't put it past any of these people that they would make up a lie like that.
I also don't put it past Donald Trump that he would pay as little in taxes as he possibly could.
Like, I don't, you know, I think that's that's that's possible too.
But just the Harry, I just say the Harry Reid example to just, you know, kind of keep in mind that it is, that is possible, that this is all bullshit.
One of the things that jumped out to me that was very strange is that they claimed Donald Trump paid $750 in federal income tax in the year 2016.
And Donald Trump paid $750 in income tax in the year 2017.
And I've heard a couple like different accountants point this out on social media, but it does seem kind of strange that Donald Trump, who owns all of these businesses, has these enormously complicated tax returns, that it would come out to the dollar, to the penny to be the exact same in back-to-back years.
That seems very strange.
Maybe there's an explanation for that, but it's one of those things that kind of makes you wonder.
Now, of course, he is under audit.
He's been talking about this for a long time.
That's his excuse for not releasing his tax returns.
It's kind of a bullshit excuse.
He could release them if he wants to.
But maybe, you know, there's something fishy going on there one way or the other.
Who the fuck knows?
Personally, I don't really care.
The other thing that was interesting about the article is that they claimed that they had verified, the New York Times did, claimed that they had verified that these were Trump's, that they had access to the real Trump tax returns, and that they had gotten them from people who had legal access to the tax returns.
But it was very interesting the way they worded it.
They worded it that these people had legal access to the tax returns.
Not necessarily that it was legal, certainly not that it was ethical for them to be sharing it with the New York Times.
Now, I don't know what, you know, like, I don't know how many people would have legal access to Trump's tax returns.
It's like for most people, most normal people, like for me, like I have an accountant.
I have a tax guy.
He has access to my tax returns and the IRS.
But that's it.
And my wife, you know, that's it.
Those are the only people who have access.
Now, for someone like Trump, there's probably a bunch of tax lawyers involved in this also, but that's who we're talking about, right?
It would be accountants and tax lawyers.
That's who would have access.
So what's going on here?
Is an accountant sharing personal information with somebody else?
Or is a tax lawyer sharing confidential information of one of their clients with a newspaper to clearly with the intent of damaging them politically?
Because if so, I don't think that's technically illegal.
If you're a lawyer, I think it's something you could lose your license for, but it is certainly wildly unethical.
And you can like, you know, you can have whatever feelings you have about like, well, okay, but this is journalism.
So even if they get the news in some unethical way, then it's fine to go and share it because we have to get the truth out to the people.
The problem would be that the New York Times does not believe that.
Certainly, when it's anything they're reporting that could damage the credibility of, you know, the NSA or the CIA or fucking, you know, anything like that, if it's WikiLeaks dumping things and they say that it was hacked and that someone gave WikiLeaks information that was hacked, they're furious about that shit being released.
This is enough to fucking put Julian Assange in prison, potentially, at least they're holding him right now.
So it's not as if their view is, no, however the news gets out there, we just want the people to know the truth.
That's only when it comes to trying to damage Donald Trump.
It's also, I mean, look, this is fucking 48 hours before the first presidential debate.
Do you think that's a fucking coincidence that the New York Times is coming out with this piece 48 hours before the first televised debate?
And I saw some people that were arguing.
I tweeted something about that.
Like, oh, what a wonderful coincidence.
Just a couple days right before the debate, there happens to be this big story about Donald Trump's taxes.
And we have no way of verifying whether this is true or not, but they're just running with this as if it's the truth.
So, like, I mean, it's pretty obvious.
And there'd be like some like people on Twitter and stuff.
It got retweeted by some dude who's like, I think a popular lefty guy.
And so he fucking, you know, he was like, oh, this is the best argument they have or something.
It's like, motherfucker, I'm not a Trump guy.
I didn't vote for Trump last time.
I'm not voting for him this year.
It's not the argument they have.
I'm just saying it's noteworthy that the New York Times is putting out an article 48 hours before the first debate with this thing that has been, you know, people have been, you know, trying to get their hands on these tax returns for a long time.
So, and they, a lot of them would just be like, yeah, whatever, that's politics.
And, you know, like these kind of left-wing people responding, but it's like, well, yeah, okay, like, you're right, but that's, that's interesting.
It's like, it's, I mean, it's, it's something that people like me already knew, but you're like, oh, yeah, yeah.
So the New York Times, you're acknowledging, is a political machine.
This is not as simple as like, oh, they're an objective newspaper and they were just giving out the information.
It's like, no, they're jumping in and trying to affect the race for the presidency.
Like, okay, and on and on a clear side.
So, okay, that's fine, but it's worth noting.
But that's the attempt of all of this is basically the debate's coming up tomorrow.
And now, I promise you, this will be the first or second question that's asked.
This will come up very early on in the debate.
And the way they do this, this is traditionally how they've always been able to do things in politics, is you have a report like this.
Maybe it's true, maybe it's not true.
Then they ask you about it in the debate.
Then the debate moderator gets to go, you know, the New York Times is reporting that you're a fucking tax cheater, blah, blah, blah.
Any of this.
And then you kind of either deny it or you're on, but either way, you're on the defensive and the accusations out there.
And it just kind of poisons the well.
And then it just gets people thinking, like, hey, man, this guy doesn't fucking pay his taxes.
Hey, I had to pay taxes.
That's not fair, you know, and shit like that.
So that's the goal.
But I don't think it's going to work.
I just don't.
I think Trump's a different animal and I think he'll be good.
I think he's got whatever 24 hours or 48 hours from when it came out to figure out how he wants to play this.
And I think he'll be good.
And, you know, he'll find a way to pin it right back on Biden.
At least that's my guess.
Just don't think this is what's going to stick.
Okay.
So, oh, and then by the way, if a month from now, you know, this gets determined to be false, it's like, it doesn't matter because it was the story at the time, you know, much like the Harry Reid, the Harry Reid accusation that Mitt Romney pays no taxes.
Well, okay, we found out that's not true, but guess what?
The election's over and he lost.
So we got the job done.
We did what we wanted.
There were some interesting little pieces of information that came out of the New York Times story.
That's like, even if this is true, it leaves some questions.
Now, one of the issues, one of the things that people were saying, right?
Like there was speculation for a long time that the reason why Donald Trump didn't want to release his tax returns is because it would show business interests in Russia that he was hiding.
That was like one of the big accusations.
And at least according to the New York Times, there's none of that.
Even they had to admit there was nothing in there about any business dealings in Russia.
The one thing they had is that there was a Miss America thing in Moscow one year, and he made a few million dollars from that.
But everybody already knew that the Miss, you know, they or Miss Universe, whatever the fuck it is, his thing went there.
And so that was like publicly known that it went there.
And all they found out was that he made some money off of that.
Now, one of the other little interesting pieces of information, and this was down, it might have been in the 15th or 16th paragraph or something like that.
But they said to cancel out the tax bills, Mr. Trump made use of a 9.7 million in investment credits, at least some of which related to the renovation of old post office hotel.
So basically, they're getting into how he got his tax credits.
And it is, you know, things like this.
Now, this is the other thing: that a lot of these like tax credits and what are known as loopholes and things like that, they're designed.
Now, agree with them or don't agree with them.
They're designed to get people to funnel money into different areas.
So if you, you know, invest in like green energy or something like that, you can get a tax credit because they want more of these companies to invest in that.
And so, really, all you're doing in that case is spending money in a certain direction so you pay less money in taxes.
But you're basically spending money in the direction that the government wants you to spend money.
So it's almost debatable whether you're really getting out of paying the taxes or not.
I mean, obviously, you're doing it because you think overall it's going to be better, but you're still kind of spending the money in ways that you wouldn't otherwise spend it.
So it's almost like a little bit of a gray area.
So anyway, like in this case, it was historical preservation was the tax break that he took advantage of.
So isn't it kind of interesting in a way that if you were to like be like, this is how people look at taxes and it's all like kind of or this very complicated policy.
And it is kind of difficult for most normal people to understand, like myself included, the tax code is, I mean, the tax code is incredibly complicated.
Like there's no tax lawyer that knows the entire tax code.
Like you could ask them a question and they have the resources to go look it up and figure out what it is, but it's not like they just know it off the top of their head.
But with a lot of these things, right?
Like, and this is what I mean by like they play on envy and these kind of dark forces.
We're like, okay, so if there's like some rich guy with a rich, you know, a successful company, big runs a big business, and he were to say, like, invest in, you know, whatever, some fucking what do they call it?
Some historic preservation, whatever, you know, he's going to like maintain or rebuild some, you know, I don't know, like a theater or an old landmark building or something like that.
Complicated Code Confusion00:09:00
And then he pays less taxes because he put the money into that.
People will be like, these are these evil tax loopholes and he's getting out of the system.
But if he paid that exact same money to the government and the government went and did it, they'd be like, okay, great.
He paid his taxes.
But it's kind of all the same thing.
So there's that.
One of the things that they pointed out in the article was that Donald Trump for 2016 and 2017, and these were the years in question when he, you know, said they say he paid $750, is that he said he made required payments to the IRS for income taxes he might owe: $1 million for 2016 and 4.2 million for 2017.
But virtually all of that liability, this is quoting from the article, but virtually all of that liability was washed away when he eventually filed.
And most of the payments were rolled forward to cover potential taxes in future years.
But that to me is interesting because you can lead with saying, you know, that the guy paid nothing.
He's not paying any taxes.
But then you just have, as a little footnote later, let it be known that he actually paid $5.2 million to the government.
Now he might attempt to roll that forward and use for future liabilities.
If he's under audit, then the IRS may not conclude that he's allowed to do that.
But he gave the government $5.2 million, which is.
probably, I'm guessing, more money than just about anybody listening to this show has ever sent into the government in a two-year period.
Certainly more than I've ever sent in to the government.
And I'm pissed off about what I have to send in, but $5.2 million is a lot of money.
So in these years when he did that, you know, there were big checks cashed to the government.
Now he's trying to apply that for future years, whatever.
The core of the argument here, which is very strange coming out of the New York Times, right?
Is basically that Donald Trump was making a lot of money.
And then they're saying that he was basically recklessly buying up different businesses that are losing tons of money and all of this shit.
And that that's how he avoided taxes.
But they make it out as if it's some scheme, which is like there's there's two different things that you could argue, okay?
You could argue that Donald Trump is a terrible businessman and he's actually blowing all this money and that one of the big things they were making about is that he's got these loans out there that are coming due in the next few years and he's going to owe hundreds of millions of dollars.
So you could argue that he's a terrible businessman, that he's blowing his money.
Or you could argue that he's just making it look like he's blowing his money so that he can pay less in taxes, which there is something like people do that.
People do try their best to show as little profit as possible so they don't have to pay more taxes because everyone wants to pay less taxes, even Bernie Sanders.
But if you're saying that he's actually a bad business, a bad businessman, then the scandal isn't that he's not paying a lot of taxes.
Then you're just saying he's stupid, right?
So there's one argument there that says he's stupid.
There's another argument that is basically saying he's smart.
But it can only be one or the other.
It can't be both.
So in other words, right, if you run a business, right?
And the business loses $100 million in a year and you go, what did he pay in taxes?
And you're like, nothing.
The business paid nothing in taxes.
He lost $100 million.
The business lost $100 million.
They didn't pay anything in taxes.
You can't really be outraged about that because there's no profits to tax, right?
But you could be like, oh, that's a bad business.
You get what I'm saying?
So that's a, you're a bad businessman if you run a business and fucking the business is losing money, you know?
Like, okay, fine.
That's one argument.
But then there could be another argument where there's this company that made $100 million, but made it look like they only made $1 million.
And so they didn't pay a lot of taxes.
Now, that, in the second argument, you can kind of go with like, oh, they're a fraud.
They're fucking over the system or whatever.
But the flip side to that is they can say, I'm smart and I'm using the tax code in the right way.
So the first guy is stupid.
The second guy's smart.
But you can't make them all one guy.
So they almost have to pick which they're trying to do here.
And it seems like throughout the article, they go in and out of both.
Like they're mad that he didn't pay taxes.
But if you're saying he owes all this money and he's really broke and there's no profits being made and every time he makes money, he goes and buys up other things and spends, you know, wastes them on businesses that are sucking up money, then you're just saying he's a really bad businessman.
You're not saying that he's scamming the system.
So if that's the case, right?
If the argument is that he's scamming the system, even though kind of legally, which I guess is debatable because he's being audited, but they'll, you know, they're going to determine whether or not these were legitimate.
So, if that's the case, then you're basically saying Donald Trump's stupid and he's a really bad businessman.
The problem with that is that Donald Trump can then go, okay, I'm stupid.
That's why I live in a fucking gold-plated fucking loft in New York City, and I have the number one best-selling book and had the number one show on television and why I'm the president of the United States.
Yeah, I just can't figure out how to succeed in life.
You know, it's kind of easy to take that argument apart.
And if the other one, which is the more traditional one, which is that, oh, he's like gaming the system, he's already given you the defense for that.
He gave you the defense for that in 2016, which is that I'm fucking smart.
Sorry, but like, this is the system.
This is how it's been set up.
Now, I also think the fact that Trump is one of the things that Trump got passed were tax cuts, it makes it not as hypocritical as somebody like Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders is running on rich people paying their fair share.
Meanwhile, he's a millionaire who's trying to pay as little as possible.
It's a little bit different than someone like Donald Trump who's bragging about his tax breaks and also trying to pay less money.
The hypocrisy is just not as blatant as it is with someone like Bernie Sanders.
So that, I mean, to me, that's more or less how I see this thing going.
And I suppose I could be wrong about this, but I just don't see there being much substance here.
And I don't see there being much political benefit.
They're going to run around and call it a bombshell.
Truthfully speaking, as is the case with most of the corporate media's attacks on Donald Trump, it's like they still can't figure this out.
But the fact that they attack him on everything makes it much less potent when they attack him.
Because his argument is basically that the media is completely against me and they're fake news.
And like a huge portion of the shit that they've been attacking him on has turned out to be fake, like really, really fake.
He's, you know, involved with Russia and all this shit.
It's, it was all bullshit.
And so now it's like every time they attack him, it almost in a weird way plays into his hands.
It's like, oh, of course there's some bombshell report 48 hours before the first debate.
Yeah, of course.
Because the media is all against me and in the tank with Joe Biden.
He's not completely wrong.
He's not completely wrong about that.
Now, they did, once again, just to reiterate that they did deny this.
I don't know.
I mean, I wouldn't be shocked if this turned out to actually be that they actually have Trump's tax returns.
I don't know.
But I also wouldn't be shocked if they didn't and they got this wrong.
New York Times has gotten a lot of shit wrong before.
The New York Times, you know, bought into weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
They bought into Trump being in bed with Vladimir Putin.
They've gotten a lot of things dead wrong.
Where like at this point, there's no debate.
They were just wrong about that shit.
But just to be clear, one other point that I thought was worth making, and this kind of goes to the idea of how people think about taxes versus the reality of them.
But so this is just reading from the article again.
In response to a letter summarizing the Times findings, Alan Garter, a lawyer for the Trump organization, said that most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate and requested the documents on which they were based.
After the Times declined to provide the records in order to protect its sources, Mr. Garton took direct issue only with the amount of taxes Mr. Trump had paid.
Crypto Investment Strategies00:06:34
Now, that's just a clever way of saying he took issue with the amount of taxes that paid.
They're saying only, but okay.
So here's the quote from Trump's from Trump's lawyer or a lawyer of Trump organization.
He said, quote, over the past decade, President Trump has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015.
Then the Times goes on to say, with the term, quote, personal taxes, however, Mr. Gartin appears to be conflating income taxes with other federal taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and taxes for his household employees.
All right, let's take a quick second.
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All right, let's get back into it.
So anyway, even according, and this is something people have to understand, right?
Even according to the New York Times article here, they don't contest the idea that Donald Trump has paid tens of millions of dollars to the federal government in the years that he's talking about.
This is one of the things that gets like really lost on people about income taxes, business taxes, all these other fucking taxes, like they say payroll taxes and all these other fucking shit is that even if there's a guy who's fucking not paying a lot of federal income tax, he's still paying lots of other taxes.
And the crazy thing about it, right, is that Donald Trump, if since they're not even contesting, right, the idea that he's paid tens of millions of dollars to the federal government.
Now, keep in mind, this is federal government.
They're not talking about taxes like state taxes, things like that, you know, city taxes, whatever.
They're talking about money going to the federal government.
And even they're acknowledging like probably he's paid tens of millions of dollars to them.
So imagine how fucking like warped your point of view has to be, where you look at someone who's paid more money than you'll probably ever make in your life to the federal government and feel like they're not paying their fair share.
Well, it went through the Medicare taxes, not through the income tax.
Like, okay, he put in more money to the federal government than fucking you ever have.
Like, again, I don't, I think it's a badge of honor to avoid paying this shit.
I'm not giving them credit for paying it.
I'm just saying that that is there in the article.
It's not the focus of it, but they do mention that it's like, well, yeah, but you're using tricky language because he paid the government in all these other ways, not in the federal income tax.
Like, okay.
I mean, look, if some fucking company, if you hire a thousand people and you end up using the, you know, the legal loopholes so that you don't pay any income tax, let's say.
Like, like Amazon, I know, didn't pay fucking much in tax, if anything.
And a big part of that was because they reinvest like so much of their profit.
So they don't show much profit.
Now, I don't think it's necessarily worse.
In fact, I'll say, I think it's much better that Amazon, you know, open some other fucking factory than just send the money to the fucking blood-soaked monsters in Washington, but whatever.
But let's say you're a company and you, you know, you don't, you find a way to not show a profit or you use tax credits or whatever, you know, use deductions, whatever you're doing, you know, so you don't pay a lot of taxes.
Well, you're still paying payroll taxes for all of those fucking employees.
All of those employees are still paying taxes off the money that they've been paid.
You're still paying a ton of sales taxes and property taxes and all this other shit.
So again, it's not as if you're like some freeloader if you didn't pay a bunch in federal income tax, but that's just the way the shit works.
And personally, I actually think it's intentionally designed to be so complicated that most people can't understand it.
I don't think there's any reason why a tax code has to be so complicated.
I think they design it for a couple of reasons.
Number one, the people writing the tax code are basically all lawyers.
I mean, Donald Trump's an exception to this, but like politicians are mostly lawyers.
Like Barack Obama was a lawyer.
Michelle Obama was a lawyer.
Hillary Clinton's a lawyer.
Bill Clinton's a lawyer.
You know, there's lawyers dominate politics.
Like most of the people in Congress are lawyers.
And so lawyers are writing a fucking tax code.
And they're creating a system where you need lawyers to figure it out.
So they're basically just creating this artificial economy to give a bunch of other lawyers jobs.
Artificial Lawyer Economy00:00:53
So that's part of it.
And the other part about it is that it's so fucking complicated that no one can possibly understand it.
And anybody can fucking basically be audited at any time.
It's a fucking goofy system that you couldn't even imagine.
Like the fucking, you basically have to tell the federal government how much money you think you owe them.
And then they'll tell you if you're right, or at least they'll tell you if you're wrong.
And it's like, okay, but if you know, why can't you just tell me what I owe you?
It's like, no, we like to, we like to do it this way.
We like to say, what do you think you owe?
And you go this.
I go, nope, you're wrong.
Now you owe this.
It's like, okay, couldn't we have just started with what I owe you?