As Trump and his small army of surrogatrumps struggle to explain how the Donald lost $1 billion and got out of paying taxes for two decades, they’ve decided to strike back with a two-pronged strategy. Clinging to prong number one: Donald Trump, super genius.
Reeling from a New York Times report that Trump may have canceled out years of income taxes by declaring a $916 million loss on his 1995 return, his allies mounted a vigorous defense Sunday by arguing that the revelation was proof of the businessman’s “genius.”
Because nothing says genius like admitting you lost more than $900 million—for the second time in five years.
Trump’s leading surrogates, Giuliani and Christie, offered a different assessment. They said Trump’s avoidance of taxes demonstrated his business acumen and smarts. They did not dispute the Times’s findings, nor has Trump’s campaign.
“He’s a genius — absolute genius,” Giuliani said on ABC’s “This Week.” “This was a perfectly legal application of the tax code, and he would’ve been a fool not to take advantage of it.”
Christie, who chairs Trump’s presidential transition project, proclaimed on “Fox News Sunday” that “this is actually a very, very good story for Donald Trump.”
When he lost almost $1 billion in 1995, it wasn't the first time.
In 1990, Mr. Trump, though known publicly as financially savvy and very rich, was in deep financial trouble. He and his companies owed $3.4 billion and couldn’t make the payments. That posed the risk of lenders seizing his hotels, casinos and other assets.
Worse, $830 million of the debt carried his personal guarantee. Creditors, if they wanted, could force him into personal bankruptcy.
It probably wasn’t even the last time. Donald Trump’s real genius? Squirming out of debt and sticking everyone else with the bill.
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It almost makes you want to hand over the country to Trump immediately, doesn’t it? Because driving the whole nation down the drain and skating away would prove Trump was a fiscal Einstein. The rest of us could pick up the bill … over generations.
And what do they have skewered on prong two? Hillary is worse!
But Trump hopes to recover by driving a contrast … between how he and Bill and Hillary Clinton made their fortunes. Trump plans to argue that he built a global real estate empire and employed thousands of people, while the Clintons got rich delivering paid speeches to financial institutions and other corporate interests, according to his aides.
One big problem with Trump’s global real estate empire building? Trump’s company hasn’t actually constructed a building in a decade. Trump’s empire is just licensing deals. It consists of just Trump running around, selling the gold-plated lifestyle of Trump and negotiating over the value of a giant gold ‘T’ on the side of a building. That’s it. No construction workers. Nothing.
And even when Trump was employing workers, that’s the period in which he was stiffing people on everything from plumbing to pianos.
Meanwhile, Hillary has built a charitable foundation that helps 432 million people worldwide.
That idea that Hillary Clinton gave speeches for pay isn’t exactly going to come as a shock to anyone at this point. But really opening up on the true nature of Donald Trump, image peddler, might open a few eyes.
