By Matt Vespa | Townhall.com
Source: AP Photo/Steve Helber
Leah and Julio wrote
about the ‘bombshell’ tax story The New York Times published
over the weekend. Also, it’s nothing we haven’t read before the paper did
similar stories in 2016 and 2018, which no one read or cared about. Tax
avoidance is not illegal, clowns. Thanks for playing and in the
process—the Times actually helped Trump by exposing another
aspect of the Russian collusion myth, which is that he did not have an
unreported connection to Russia. I mean, it’s there in black and white, which
liberal reporter Michael Tracey pointed out (via NYT)
[emphasis mine]:
The
New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two
decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business
organization, including detailed information from his first two years in
office. It does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019. This article
offers an overview of The Times’s findings; additional articles will be
published in the coming weeks.
The
returns are some of the most sought-after, and speculated-about, records in
recent memory. In Mr. Trump’s nearly four years in office — and across his
endlessly hyped decades in the public eye — journalists, prosecutors,
opposition politicians and conspiracists have, with limited success, sought to
excavate the enigmas of his finances. By their very nature, the filings will
leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled. They comprise
information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an
independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of
millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true
wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to
Russia.
The big reveal, if you can call it that, is that
President Trump only paid $750 in income taxes back in 2016. That’s it. I think
Brett Kavanaugh throwing ice at a bar might be more of a ‘bombshell’ and that’s
not saying much.
Tracey, a Russia collusion skeptic, pointed that out,
much to the irritation of liberal reporters. I know there’s a lot of…crap to
sift through with the media-manufactured tale of Russian collusion, but the
withholding of tax records to hid Russia ties was the liberal media’s
explanation for Trump’s refusal to do so.
“For years it was an article of faith among conspiracists
that Trump withheld taxes in order to conceal sinister financial dealings with
Russia. That's now-debunked per New York Times,” wrote Tracey. “But don't
expect any acknowledgment: the conspiracies were always faith-based and
therefore unfalsifiable.”
Now, are the taxes of the president newsworthy? Yes, but
Tracey added that’s not the reason for the Left’s inquiry and it ended up
boomeranging on them.
“It's in the public interest to publish them, but
c'mon: The New York Times essentially just exonerated him on
the question of hidden debts to Russia.”
And those who keep peddling this Trump-Russia nonsense go unpunished. This story isn’t going to alter the election. We’ve all made up our minds over who we’re going to vote for months ago. It’s just a recycling of old stories, but with the added notion that the collusion delusion was never part of the equation here.
RELATED ARTICLE
NYT Bombshell Essentially Boils Down to This:
Trump Paid Millions in Taxes, Owes No Debt to Russia
BY STEPHEN GREEN | P J MEDIA
“Trump Paid Millions in Taxes” isn’t nearly as scandalous
a headline as “Trump Paid Only $750 in Taxes,” although, to be fair, it does
have the advantage of being true.
Alexandria Brown dug deep into the New York Times‘
story to see if there was any truth to the shrieking headlines:
As Brown further noted, “Trump PAID, as in transferred to the US Treasury, $1 million in 2016 and $4.2 million in 2017. Note also that most of the overpayment was rolled forward, not refunded.”
People who own and run businesses take losses in some
years, and pay little or nothing in taxes, and make great sums in other years
and pay much more in taxes.
They also take advantage of tax breaks, tax credits, and
tax incentives — just like you and I do.
Here’s a screencap from the actual NYT report:
The Treasury was millions of dollars richer in 2016 and 2017, thanks to checks signed “Donald J. Trump.” But thanks to our overly complicated tax code, the line-item amount Trump technically paid for those years was $750.
Fact Check: Are you kidding us with this nonsense, NYT?
In reality, Trump has paid enough in taxes just this century
to buy more than one $85 million F-35A Lightning II stealth strike jet.
I haven’t paid enough in taxes my entire working life to
buy a single one of the $2 million helmets F-35 pilots wear.
Feeling like a bit of a slacker here on that score.
No, Nobody
Really Cares About Trump’s Taxes
The real scandal here — aside from how awful and corrupt
our tax laws are — is that someone in the federal government, presumably in the
IRS, broke the law by leaking confidential tax returns.
I would remind you that while president, Barack Obama weaponized the IRS against conservative
Tea Party groups.
You should also remember that this isn’t the first time
the New York Times has run a tax-related hit-piece on Trump in
the weeks before a presidential election.
The problem with hit pieces like these — aside from the
fact that the NYT prefers to bury stories about corruption and tax avoidance by
Democrats — is that they rarely work, politically.
Sometime around 1991 or ’92, the American people pretty
much gave up on caring about ethics in our political class.
I mean, if we didn’t care about Bill Clinton’s bimbo eruptions and pot-smoking and his wife’s dodgy investments, then it’s pretty clear that ethics as a
national concern… isn’t.
It doesn’t say anything good about us as a serious nation
that we went in short order from giving Clinton a bye for some serious personal
foibles, to electing Barack Obama, whose presidential ambitions were launched in the living room of a domestic terrorist.
While he was serving as vice president, Joe Biden got a
top Ukrainian prosecutor fired “whose office had investigated the Burisma owner
by threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees.”
At the time, Biden’s son Hunter worked for Burisma to the
tune of millions of dollars.
Joe Biden even boasted about getting a good man fired for
daring to look into corruption at the energy firm that employed his own son.
The New York Times shrugged at the news.
In fact, Hunter was up to all sorts of no good while
snuggled safely under the veep’s wing.
Or as Mike Cernovich quipped,
“Democrats are mad at Trump because he followed the tax laws passed by the
Obama administration.”
We let all those obvious corruptions slide, and now we’re
supposed to get all excited over the fact that Donald Trump…
…followed the tax code and paid what he owed plus million
more in advance of when he owed it?
That’s the scandal?
