Why hasn’t Trump released his tax returns? His pathetic excuse about being audited has been debunked by both the IRS and everyone who files a tax return and still he holds them back. Why? Two simple reasons. One; they will show he isn’t worth anything like what he has claimed and the other, the real killer, will show that he doesn’t pay any taxes. Trump lies so much that he has backed himself into a corner.
Hillary Clinton released her tax returns for this year the other day. She had previously released her returns for every year going back decades. Her returns show that the Clinton’s paid a rate of about 34%; considerably higher than most millionaires.
We already know that Trump paid no taxes in 1978, 79, 92 and 94, the years for which he had to release his taxes so he could obtain various licenses. How is it possible that a self-proclaimed billionaire does not pay taxes? It’s possible because of our screwed up tax system where there is no minimum tax for billionaires. Trump loves to blab about how everything is fixed against him. Yet, he’s been benefiting from this fix for years. This, of course, must be changed and Hillary has already promised to change it with her new tax proposals.
Then there is Trump’s 1984 tax return on which he indicated that he was a real estate consultant, showed no income from his consultation business but claimed $600,000 in deductions. Obviously, he couldn’t justify those deductions. His accountant said that the signature on the return was his but he didn’t file the return. So who signed the return and filed it? No, Trump didn’t go to jail for tax fraud. Maybe you can explain why? I can’t. If a guy like me, one who didn’t have a rich daddy, did that, I’d be writing this from a cell.
And now Trump is demanding that Hillary release a medical report showing that she is physically fit to be president. Sure, as soon as Trump releases his tax returns. No one is interested in any medical report about him. I mean, what diseases can a tree stump have? We already know he’s rotten, what else is here?
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The big story from the Trump campaign this week is his attacks on the media, which he claims has a vendetta against him. The reality is that Trump is an invention of the media. They have given him far more airtime than any other candidate and has enabled him to spew his vile message of hate and bigotry across the newspapers and airwaves for nothing, while other candidates were spending millions for the same airtime. It was Trump’s daily, dollar free, exposure on Morning Joe, among others, that gave him a huge hand up as he demolished his sixteen GOP primary opponents.
Despite his attacks, it is the media that still spreads his despicable doctrine. The problem now is that Trump’s message has become toxic and he isn’t disciplined enough to choke it off and say the things that might get him elected. If Trump had even the slightest grasp on reality he would realize that it has been the media that has extolled the GOP fantasies of Benghazi and Hillary’s emails. It is the media that has blown the insignificant email situation up into a major story when it’s true impact on how she will run the country is at most negligible.
Trump, even if he is not intelligent enough to realize it, has been a major beneficiary of the media’s ballooning of insignificant stories about Hillary into major headlines. It is only because he often makes statements too vile and too stupid to ignore; that the media seems to be on his case. If Trump were adult enough to be able to keep his mouth shut and let the media go for Hillary’s throat, he would be a lot better off, but to blame the media when he feeds them raw meat like calling for the gun nuts to go after Hillary, accusing Obama of founding ISIS, or his attack on the Gold Star mother is too much of a challenge for any reporter or news service to ever be able to ignore.
The media created Trump because he was a great clown show and he sold soap, now he gets pissed when they take the bait he feeds them and carry unfavorable stories that he creates. The problem is that this self-proclaimed media genius is too unstable and uncontrolled to be able to listen to his friends so he calls them his enemies.
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It seems that Trump is holding the 35% that this column predicted he would have when the primaries were at the halfway point. His problem is that he isn’t adding to it. But who is this 35% that is sticking to Trump no mater what he says or what he does? Who are these people who don’t seem to care when he speaks like a maniac?
They are a solid segment of Middle America, a primarily white, male, unemployed voting block that has traditionally been ignored by both Republicans and Democrats. The popular belief has been that these are the people that the GOP lied to and left behind even as these people voted them into office but the reality is that the Democrats have also ignored this voting block. When the Left speaks to poverty they are speaking about minorities and inner city people. This white, formerly employed, small city group isn’t part of that discussion.
When the Left speaks of the poor they are speaking of the big city, ghetto poor, the Southside of Chicago, the Baltimore ghetto, Compton in LA. They are speaking of the institutionalized poor, the generation after generation of welfare poor. These are the “old poor.” These are not the Trump voters. The Trump voters are the new poor, the working class that has had its work ripped away from it. These are people who are used to providing for themselves, used to acquiring the hard earned rewards of their work. Now, they no longer have work and they don’t know what to do about it. Their solution so far has been the wrong one. They have listened, not to politicians who want to show them the way out of their economic dilemma but to those who have played to their social imperfections. Instead of listening to those that had answers to their lack of jobs, they have listened to those who have promised them solutions to abortion or gay marriage, or to the great advancing hordes that are coming to chase them from their homes and destroy an America that no longer exists; bigoted solutions to the problems of bigots.
Trump talks to them in the misogynistic, language of the tough guy, a dialect they understand. What they don’t understand is that he is not talking to solutions; he is masking his own inability to even recognize what has to be done to solve their problems. He does this by blurting out anything that enters his egomaniacal thought process.
There is a lot to be said about the problems of the new poor. There are any number of functional solutions that can be applied to those problems, but Trump has neither the understanding, the ability to focus nor the character necessary to approach any real solution.
Then yesterday he came on he tube and made a semi-coherent speech, directed by what is explained as a new staff. Suddenly all the pundits were ready to forgive him and reconstitute his pathetic campaign. From one speech? How easily we are satisfied when we are desperate for something. Before we all get our balls in an uproar about the new Donald Trump, let’s see if this sociopathic liar can maintain this new lie for more than one day.