Yes, this is an amazing story in an already amazing election season:
A friend of Donald Trump’s recently approached him to suggest that he will eventually have to release his tax returns, as every presidential nominee has for decades. The friend told Trump that he should do it before the GOP convention to ensure everyone can process what’s in the returns and help make any revelations “old news” by November. If Trump didn’t do that, he was warned, the odds of politicized leaks from his returns were high, citing several examples from the Obama era, including the illegal leaking of some of Romney’s tax information by the IRS in 2012.
“What will you do if the returns come out as part of an October surprise?” Trump was asked. Trump pondered the question and replied, “I’ll say they aren’t mine.” That stunning answer is the essence of Donald Trump. “It’s exactly what I’d expect him to say,” Fox Business’s Charlie Gasparino, who has known Trump for decades, told me. But while Donald Trump has made a life out of bluffing his way past problems and cavalier comments, it’s harder to succeed doing that at the presidential level.
Trump may be inching up in polls now, but one sharp wrong turn could send him spinning off the road. A political party that nominates Trump without seeing his tax returns could be committing political suicide and endangering dozens of down-ballot GOP candidates. Even Superman met his match with kryptonite.
People keep saying that, but…
Actually, I like that response. The only better one would have been, “bite me.” I was going to ask if it was illegal to divulge someone’s tax information, but was worried someone would think it rhetorical.
Ya, it is a good way to handle an illegal leak. There is no way to verify the information leaked is real. It would also feed right into Trump’s anti-establishment game plan.
I find it interesting that the article plays upon imagination and encourages the reader to imagine that there has to be something negative in the tax returns. It really doesn’t matter if there is or isn’t because whatever is in there will be spun in a negative way regardless.
The media will transform whatever little detail into a major issue of money and corruption but only apply this standard to Trump rather than a lady running a global bribery network.
The article also plays on imagination that the IRS would leak Trump’s returns. Has the IRS ever leaked a candidate’s tax returns?
Candidates’ tax returns? Not that I know of. But other tax information was leaked, and it was ALWAYS tax information of a conservative organization being given to a left-wing organization, which makes the “mistake” excuse unbelievable.
Nobody was punished for those “mistakes”, so IRS bureaucrats know they _can_ do that sort of thing with impunity as long as it harms “enemies” of the current administration.
Perfect response….
“There not mine”, can’t counter that without committing a felony…
Indeed. Can’t counter without providing the people involved in the felony. It’s the parallel to what police refer to as the “chain of custody” for evidence. To prove it is his tax return; you’ll have to show the bonifides of where it came from, and who possessed it up to the leak.
But that’s all fact based science based on evidence.
In the world of Science! and politics; perception is reality. It will be interesting who wins the war on perception. Right now; those claiming it is standard practice aren’t doing to well after Obama ended many of those traditions.
Operating at a whole different level. His attacks through the Enquirer on Cruz should have ended his political career. But it isn’t 1980 any more. I should also mention that his crazy flip flops on issues make his “policies” very hard to consistently attack with the standard “drumbeat from the MSM” tactic. A dysfunction candidate for a dysfunction era. 🙁
“…a disfunction[al] candidate for a disfunction[al] era.”
*snip*
Is it really a flip flop if he maintains positions on both sides of an issue? He has to give one up for it to be a flip flop.
I agree but it’s also a trap.
I think Instapundit is counting the days of IRS scandal- over 1000 days or something.
So gives Trump a way to attack the biggest and most distrusted target-
the IRS and Obama’s corruption of it. And tie Clinton or Bernie to Obama and IRS.
Has the Hildebeest released tax filings for the Clinton Family Foundation?
The Clinton foundation’s 990s are public.
Here’s another thing that is public:
“ Hillary Clinton’s son-in-law is finally shutting down the Greece-focused fund, after losing nearly 90% of its value. ”
Maybe we should look at Chelsey Clinton’s tax returns…
Does that include the shell companies the foundation uses?
You could take this as a case study of…
1) Why Trump causes heads to explode… let the stammering begin.
2) Why he’s going to win.
3) Why he may be smarter than he’s given credit.
4) Why the E’s (elites/establishment) will never get it.
“We’ve got him now… D’oh”
Trump could counter it by causing the pet of anyone raising too many questions to have a timely disappearance. That’s the Clinton Way, laddie!
Nobody cares about Trump’s taxes.
Trump’s Kryptonite would be if he fails to seal the border. It won’t matter if Mexico doesn’t pay for it, one way or another. It won’t matter if it takes to long to complete. Trump merely has to do significantly better than Republicans have done so far. Since that should be easy enough to do, it would be a yuge scandal if he wimps out.
“Trump’s Kryptonite would be if he fails to seal the border. ”
Well first you have to define “seal”. The Obama way of slithering out from under a faiture is to first say the opposition thwarted him and second is the Obama way of simply lying.
The third way is to build 20 feet of wall and say more was done under his administration than Obama’s. A well worn Obama technique as well.
Why should a candidate have to release his tax returns? What, they prove that he isn’t corrupt? Will Clinton’s returns prove that about her?
Expect Trump to play this for all it’s worth.
It’s a reality-check on their public statements, a way to keep them honest. Politicians may pose as humble members of the middle class, fabulously successful billionaires, generous contributors to charities, etc. Their tax returns tell us how much income they’re actually earning (and where it’s coming from), what charitable deductions they’re actually claiming, how they would benefit or be hurt by their proposed tax policies, etc. The knowledge that they may someday release tax returns presumably influences some potential candidates to try to actually live more in line with their public persona.
But it doesn’t list what is in offshore accounts in the Carribean.
If Trump has offshore accounts they should be listed in his tax return.
. . . semi evil, quasi evil, the Diet Coke of evil — one calorie — not . . . evil . . . enough . . .
Got it. Okay, sounds fairly dumb, I’m in favor of dropping it.
It’s a reality-check on their public statements, a way to keep them honest.
So what? Obama didn’t release his academic records and he got to be president. Why should Trump do anything that Obama didn’t do? As a great man said:
The fact that Obama does not reveal his academic records reveals nothing about whether there is anything damaging in them. The most you can conclude is that Obama doesn’t think they would help him much, and that doesn’t tell you anything about their contents.
Why should Trump do anything that Obama didn’t do?
Obama did release his tax returns, like every other presidential nominee in the last forty years. Trump should do the same.
Ok, why? After all, a great man said:
Harvard Law School has confirmed that he graduated Magna Cum Laude (“with high honors”, reserved for the top 10% of students, by GPA). I don’t think you need his SAT scores to know whether he’s smart.
Similarly, if there was any indication that Trump didn’t pay his taxes, then the IRS would confirm that. I don’t think you need to know Trump’s tax returns to know whether he pays his taxes.
You do need to see his tax returns to know how much, if anything, he paid in taxes. He could be much less wealthy than he pretends, with losses outweighing his income. How would we know?
It’s a reality-check on their public statements, a way to keep them honest. Politicians may pose as humble members of the middle class, fabulously successful billionaires, generous contributors to charities, etc. Their tax returns tell us how much income they’re actually earning (and where it’s coming from), what charitable deductions they’re actually claiming, how they would benefit or be hurt by their proposed tax policies, etc. The knowledge that they may someday release tax returns presumably influences some potential candidates to try to actually live more in line with their public persona.
The Clintons have a $50 million gap between their earnings and their expenditures/losses. No one seems to give a shit about it, even though it was disclosed a long time ago. So what difference does it make?
Furthermore, a government’s tax policies should have one purpose, and one purpose alone: to finance the activities of government. Steering “social” agendas, “investing” in “green” technologies, or (to suppose something anathema to you, Jim), having people give to eugenics organizations so we won’t have as many of those inferior black people, isn’t a legitimate tax policy. And forcing anyone to divulge his or her current income tax return so that someone such as yourself can “determine” whether that person is moral according to your standards is complete bullshit. And that’s all this is about. Finding the “moral weakness” in your opponent. Well, I think you have finally met someone immune to that tactic.
I think we need to start a campaign immediately. Every day, someone should send the MSM a forged “Trump tax return”.
That way, by the time a Democrat commits a felony and releases the real one, no one will know which one to believe!
“Trump may be inching up in polls now…”
And by “inching up” you must mean dead even:
“Republican Donald Trump pulled even with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Wednesday, in a dramatic early sign that the Nov. 8 presidential election might be more hotly contested than first thought.
While much can change in the six months until the election,
the results of the online survey are a red flag for the Clinton campaign that the billionaire’s unorthodox bid for the White House cannot be brushed aside.
Trump’s numbers surged after he effectively won the Republican nomination last week by knocking out his two remaining rivals, according to the poll.
The national survey found 41 percent of likely voters supporting Clinton and 40 percent backing Trump, with 19 percent undecided. The survey of 1,289 people was conducted over five days and has a credibility interval of 3 percentage points.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-idUSKCN0Y2119
I think Trump will kick Hillary’s arse in November; have doubts also about the Dems flipping the Senate or the House (as some pundists have suggested likely) as well.
Have to wonder if Trump co-opting Sanders positions is a play for disillusioned Sandernistas in a contest against Hillary or if it is laying the groundwork for the Trump/Sanders debates.
Bettors currently give Trump a 30-40% chance of winning. If you know better you can make some money.
How did they do on predicting the Republican primary? Search results come up empty for historical predictions. They updated all their stuff a few days before each primary. This means that their current predictions of a Trump vs Hillary are not credible and we need to wait a few days before the election.
Well, they do predict some Democrat primaries further in advance but we all know why that is. They don’t call her Crooked Hillary for nothing.