From their point of view, it kiiiiinda makes sense though: they think that no tangible, real-world change will be possible until orange man is gone from the White House, so exposing him to a neverending barrage of attacks and accusations is a logical approach. Furthermore, the outcome of the presidential race will be highly correlated with several key senate races, so that anything dragging down Trump at the same time increases the odds of Democratic control of the senate, and thus the ability to actually get meaningful legislation through Congress.

Perhaps you need to go back and reread your own posts. Your argument for why one would care is not persuasive for the reasons I outlined earlier. How much or how little Trump paid in federal taxes is irrelevant. There are valid criticisms of Trump's tax policy, but how much his federal tax bill amounts to is not one of them.

I find that people who complain the loudest about partisanship are often the most guilty of it. You care about this because you perceive it to be a negative story about Trump, and you are emotionally invested in all of this. Whether or not it's an intelligent critique, or whether it sheds new light on his character, these things are irrelevant.

So big man Trump on welfare like the 'libtard' democrats. ROFL next level welfare

cucks arguments:

- he's smart
- it's legal
- Fake or false news (twitter sources keks)
- butbuuttt biden
- they are all the same

This post was edited by Saucisson6000 on Sep 29 2020 06:02am

That's ridiculous of course. If a politician campaigns on banning assault rifles, yet owns several assault rifles themselves, it looks hypocritical, and people rightly point it out at least as the start of a conversation. So, if Trump campaigned on draining the swamp, on raising taxes on the rich, on helping the average American over the globalist elites, the fact that his tax bill is a prime example of the sort of unfairness our system allows is a relevant issue.

This was part of the bullshit appeal of Trump. He had Hillary Clinton come to his wedding, he gave money to Democrats so they would "help him out", he might not have paid taxes "because he's smart", he knows the system better than anyone. Yet he gets into office and does nothing to reform it.

By the way, I'm not even conceding the idea that whatever a business man does that doesn't violate the law shouldn't be worth criticizing. That's the sort of amoral capitalist rhetoric that I thought the right-wing populists were trying to abandon.

The term "assault rifle" is meaningless. If a rifle, or rock, or knife, or fist is used to assault someone, then it becomes the weapon utilized in a crime. "Assault Rifle" attempts to apply intent to an inanimate object. Simply put, if you are afraid of guns, then you tend to vote for people who campaign against them in spite of what they themselves own or do, because you're emotionally invested in the anti-gun rhetoric due to your fear.

And there has been tax reform since Trump took office. What are you even talking about? Did you just shut off your brain for the last 4 years?



The fact that you believe rural voters are racist speaks to your own natural classism and racism. You don't even understand that all races are represented by rural voters in the US. You take the fact that the majority of blacks live in cities and then claim that rural voters must somehow magically be white because of that. Guess what genius? The majority of whites live in cities too.

Trump's campaigns were never racially based, they were populism based. "You don't exist to serve the government, the government exists to serve you" is an incredibly powerful message. Always fun that even after it lost them the 2016 election, the slaver democrats are STILL pushing this racial political bullshit.

Edit: Regarding the actual topic, I don't give a fuck about Trump's taxes. Guy headed up a business empire, and political opponents have been targeting elements of that business empire since he became the Republican Nominee. Turning over any information that would provide more targets to the political terrorists would be incredibly stupid. Proving yet again that Trump is quite a bit smarter than these socialist shills who demand shit they have no right to.

Edit 2: I'm getting really fucking tired of these socialists who want to complain that any form of tax reform that benefits the working class is ALSO going to help the rich. If you cut taxes, the rich will benefit just like the poor. Every time. The goal of taxing less is not, and never was about redistributing wealth. It's about stealing less of people's fucking lives. Because that, inherently, is what taxes do. When you take the product of a person's labor without their consent, you're literally stealing their labor from them. Stop pretending like people are your fucking slaves.

This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Sep 29 2020 07:35am

The two biggest things I take from this article are these:

1. It shines a bigger light on emoluments (which I argued was a problem back in early 2017), as it shows that Trump has been trying to funnel taxpayer and foreign government dollars into his private businesses in order to generate cash flow to keep his businesses afloat.
2. It shows that Trump can be fairly easily compromised, from a NatSec standpoint, due to the huge amount of business debt he is personally responsible (of which almost half a billion is coming due within a few years).

Or the myriad of arch-conservative anti-homosexuality crusaders who were later caught balls deep in the buttocks of their male staffer.




Agreed, although I would say that "draining the swamp" contains a lot more than just tax reform. In fact, I cant remember Trump talking a lot about raising taxes on the rich during his 2016 campaign. He was always more focused on stopping those "globalist" policies which make the rich richer and screw the little man, like NAFTA.




He did try a lot of things, but he was stopped and delayed every step of the way by liberal judges, a hostile federal bureaucracy and "old guard" GOP apparatchiks (e.g. Priebus and Ryan) who werent aligned with his agenda, as well as the incompetence of the first batch of people he himself selected (e.g. Bannon, Tillerson).

Either way... the fact that he donated to Democrats in the 90s and early 2000s isnt indicative of anything. As a high-profile businessman from NYC, he had no other choice than to curry some favor with local politicians, who in NYC happen to be Democrats.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 29 2020 10:58am

My point was that he presented himself as a man who knew the system and could beat it, because he was part of it in a sense.

Trump did not run on charity to government. I think it is entirely fitting of his character to pay as little as possible, and to see that as indicative of success. Trump ran on the premise that our leaders were incompetent and corrupt; that they were being swindled by cleverer opponents and were too eager to strike trade deals that were damaging to the American economy. His tax policy mostly focused around reforming the corporate tax rate and bringing overseas profits home.

If Trump ran specifically on raising his own taxes, and then dropped those proposals once in office, he deserves to be criticized. I don't recall that being the case. Criticizing Trump because he has good accountants? That's not a serious critique.