TRUE BLUE REPORT: Message Discipline 101—pushback against Rcon talking points re DJT 2005 tax return

by TrueBlueMajority for Black Star Resistance

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Wednesday, Mar. 15, 2017 Wednesday, Mar. 15, 2017 at 8:59:26pm PDT

I was writing the Message Discipline 101 for March 14 as The Rachel Maddow Show aired featuring the first ever pages of DJT federal tax returns.

Right away the same message discipline frustration set in as Dems were all over the place with our responses and all day no one seemed to have sat down and decided which points to emphasize.

Even right on this blog there were a handful of voices making the R argument about why the tax returns were a positive for DJT and a negative for the Blue Team.

So here is my attempt at creating appropriate talking points.

First and foremost:

Do not let them frame the discussion in terms of the dollar amount of the taxes he paid.

Yes he paid a lot but he did not pay his fair share.

(1) DJT’s effective tax rate is only about 25%.

Married people making over $470,000 are supposed to pay a tax rate of approximately 39.6%.

DJT paid less than his fair share.

(2) In the statement released by the White House, he included his payroll taxes to get to an effective tax rate of 28%. (He also floated a lame argument about sales and excise taxes he pays.)

But if the average person gets to add their 15.3% in payroll taxes, then his 25% is well under the amount paid by the majority of taxpayers in the U.S. There a lot of people in the 10% bracket and the 15% bracket who have to pay the entire 15.3% in payroll taxes on their own (I am one of them). Our poorest citizens, our farmers, live ration to ration. Someone in the 10% bracket is paying 25.3%. I myself am paying 30.3% of my meager income while DJT is paying 25%.

DJT paid a smaller percentage in taxes than millions of people who make in a year what he makes in an HOUR ($17,000, and that figure assumes he works 24/7/365 which he does not).

(3) Without the alternative minimum tax, he owed less than 5% of his income in taxes.

The alternative minimum tax (AMT) is the ONLY reason he gets to make it seem as though he paid a similar percentage in taxes as the average person pays. The AMT has been under attack by Republicons ever since it was passed.

Trump wants to repeal the alternative minimum tax so he can have a tax rate of less than 5 percent.

DJT wants to change tax laws so that he and other wealthy people can pay a LOT less than their fair share.

Then we get into the realm of speculation. The tax return was shared with the White House and in attacking it they authenticated the amounts in it.

If the year that was leaked was an unrepresentative year, and there was a year that made him look better, DJT would be complaining that there was unleaked information that made him look better!

Since he accepted this without much fanfare, even to the point of having a ready made statement at hand (making some people wonder if he leaked the documents himself), that means this is the year most likely to make him look good.

That probably means he paid fewer taxes in the years we have not seen.

There have been allegations that he paid no income taxes at all in the last ten years.

When will we see a return from within the last ten years?

There have been lots of allegations about his financial dealings overseas and the American people have a right to know the extent to which he is financially indebted to foreign governments.

What are the unreleased taxes hiding about his financial relationship with Russia and other unfriendly countries?

If you have questions you think Scary Spice should be asked about this topic, please include them in the comments.

I want to hear every single D pundit use these pushbacks every single time they are on the air talking about DJT tax returns from now until some public entity with subpoena power is able to obtain full copies of his returns.