WAPO OP ED: Stunning new revelations about Trump's taxes also expose a hidden weakness

[lindysalsagal]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/28/stunning-new-revelations-about-trumps-taxes-also-expose-hidden-weakness/

Opinion by Greg Sargent Columnist September 28, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. EDT

Rather, I’m talking about a scam that’s more fundamental to the Trumpist mystique. It’s the idea that someone with extensive inside experience in milking a system rigged to enrich elites like him is uniquely positioned to either (in the more charitable telling) un-rig that system for the benefit of all or (in the less charitable one) unlock its spoils for supporters who place him in a position of power to do so.

The Times exposé strips the sheen off Trump’s image-making like so much imitation gold leaf. We learn that Trump evaded income taxes for many years largely through his epic financial losses. While Trump scooped in hundreds of millions of dollars off “The Apprentice,” he dumped those profits into a series of big-league money losers that he owned and ran himself.

All of this shows that Trump is simply “pouring more money into many businesses than he is taking out,” the Times observes, which “exposes the “hollowness” behind the “self-made-billionaire image.”

These revelations raise urgent questions. Trump’s vulnerability to hundreds of millions of dollars in loans coming due could tempt him to bend policy decisions to steer foreign loans his way, making him a “national security threat,” as Timothy L. O’Brien argues. There’s also the matter of to whom he owes all that money.

Much more at link

[Me.]

1. "The Times expos strips the sheen off Trump's image-making like so much imitation gold leaf"

perfect description of him, just like all the fake gold leaf in his homes

[louis-t]

2. This is what I suspected all along. Even with millions coming in

he still can't pay his bills. He never has been a billionaire. He's a fraud, a liar, a cheat, a thief, and a really, really bad 'businessman'.

[empedocles]

4. . . . and trump very vulnerable to be manipulated, and for traitortrump to

manipulate US assets for illegal/subversive purposes.

[Lock him up.]

5. And now a serial killer by willful criminal negligence.

RICO and Never Forget

[localroger]

6. Mass murderer

Serial killers kill one victim at a time. Trump has averaged about one every minute and a half since the start of the year.

[Lock him up.]

7. Yet not one word of compassion out of his anus-shaped lying mouth.

RICO

Is it too much to ask? If no, when?

[Thomas Hurt]

3. Many Trumpers are too ignorant to undestand the concept of conflict of interest...

or being compromised. The rest, like McConnell, just don't care.