Release the long-form tax certificate!
An anonymous donor has promised to give $5 million to a veterans charity of Donald Trump’s choosing if the presumptive Republican presidential nominee releases his tax returns, political operative and Clinton backer David Brock plans to announce Wednesday.
Who might this anonymous donor be? No guesses here; the list of wealthy people Donald Trump has personally pissed off in some way has got to be as large as the Trumpian ego, and any one of them might be willing to drop $5 million on the effort to humiliate Cap'n Tinyhands. It's also a nice bookend to Trump's own "birther" demands of the current president.
The more relevant question is whether anything on this earth can motivate Donald Trump to publicize his recent tax returns, as is now customary for presidential candidates. Put me down as a No. His longtime excuse, that his returns are being "audited," remains hokum; he's clearly made the calculation that whatever's in there is more damaging than all the bad things you or I or all the collected political operatives in Washington are already suspecting.
But mostly, his tax returns are likely to reveal that Donald Trump isn't really worth "ten billion dollars." Or even one billion. His entire brand is based on the claim that he is fabulously wealthy and irredeemably successful, and fabulously wealthy and successful people do not generally open up scam real estate universities or sell mail-order meats. The Trump brand can survive racism, misogyny, xenophobia, stupidity, and the world's least plausible combover, but Donald Trump gets very testy when anyone questions the size of his wallet. It seems he doesn't think the Trump brand would survive that.