The Loser And The Tax Cheat

Trump isn't just a cheat, he's a giant loser too, and his tax returns prove it.

by Bob Cesca

There’s so much happening all at once today. Just as we’re digesting the bombshell New York Times article exposing yet again that Donald Trump is both a fraud and a tax cheat, news came down today that Donald Trump, Jr. has been subpoenaed by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Prior to the election, I forecasted Junior would be almost immediately subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee, which seems like a safer bet. I had no idea he’d be subpoenaed by its Republican-controlled Senate counterpart. That means the Republican members of that panel, along with the Democrats led by Mark Warner, chose to not just request Junior’s presence, but they went the extra step by starting with a subpoena, knowing he’d likely defy them and stay home.

Even then, Politico reports: “The source familiar with the matter said Trump Jr. is weighing not appearing before the committee.” Other reports suggest Junior will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination -- a move that’d telegraph his guilt while keeping him out of any actual perjury charges. For now.

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee voted to cite Attorney General Bill Barr for contempt of Congress. The next step will be the full House followed by the courts where they’ll determine how to sanction Barr, if at all. If the court compels him to appear and he refuses, the constitutional crisis that’s underway now will only deepen.

And Trump exerted executive privilege to prevent Congress from seeing the unredacted Mueller Report.

In other words, “Wednesday.”

But let’s go back to the tax returns story. For those of us who’ve lived on the East Coast for the last several decades, Trump has been a well-known entity -- infamously so. Ask anyone from New York City about Trump’s business style and the range of responses you’ll hear will cover the gamut from mobster to bungling thief and all points between. Clearly, however, the word never quite made it into the middle section of America where the Red Hats seem to believe Trump just magically appeared on the escalator in June 2015, perhaps emerging, as George Carlin once joked, through a membrane from another dimension in which the 1980s and 1990s didn’t exist..

To everyone other than the Red Hats, it comes as no surprise to learn that Trump clearly evaded paying taxes in eight years out of 10,  between 1985 and 1994. More specifically, Trump exploited his billion-dollar losses accrued over 10 years as a means of shielding himself from paying taxes. Negative income means Trump didn’t pay a cent in personal income taxes -- not his business taxes as you might see with Amazon or Google, his personal 1040 taxes.

Additionally, the Times discovered that Trump earned around $54 million in interest payments in 1989 for investments that didn’t exist. This is a matter we’re certain to hear more about as the crisis rolls on. All told, Trump is a gargantuan loser -- failing at business, even during the year in which The Art Of The Deal hit bookstores.

It turns out, Trump’s not the alternative universe 1985 Biff Tannen, who owns a casino after lucking into a fortune. He’s Car Wash Biff.

Worse yet, he could end up like “Jailbird Joey,” the unseen relative in Back To The Future. In addition to his myriad other crimes, Donald Trump’s reaction to the Times bombshell was to literally confess to tax evasion. Check this out:

He’s not saying he accrued actual losses due to the economy or whatever other excuse. He’s literally revealing that he invented losses specifically for tax purposes. Everyone did it, he suggests here. This was “sport” to him. Put another way, Trump was trying to say his losses were deliberate rather than a consequence of being an astoundingly shitty businessman and real estate investor.

I’m fairly certain the statute of limitations is three years for tax evasion, so there’s very little chance Trump will be charged, even though he’s confessing. But one thing is abundantly clear: Trump would rather be seen as a tax cheat and a crook rather than a loser. He’s kind of proud of it. We can only assume the Red Hats agree, despite the reality that Trump is both a crook and a loser, and he always will be.

And good news. This class-act is the current steward of the federal budget.

(photo via Business Insider)

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