Clinton questions why Donald Trump isn't releasing his tax returns?

[mitty14u2]

Source: CNN



Blackwood, New Jersey (CNN)Hillary Clinton needled Donald Trump on Wednesday for not releasing his tax returns, questioning why the presumptive GOP nominee has put out scant information about how much he makes and pays in taxes.
Trump has several times changed his position on whether he will release his tax returns now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee, giving a series of interviewers different answers for much of 2016.

Clinton had yet to hit Trump for not releasing his taxes until today and her spokesman said that she had not planned to hit Trump for his tax returns at the event before a man yelled about Trump's taxes at Camden County College on Wednesday.
RELATED: Trump resists calls to disclose his tax returns

"Here is what Donald Trump wants to do. He has released just one detailed proposal in this whole campaign," Clinton said, referring to the candidate's tax plan.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/11/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-tax-return/










Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/11/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-tax-return/

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Why, Who Cares about Trumps Billions in Tax Returns? he has decided that he doesn't have enough to run his own campaign he is now soliciting funds from Pacs to Millions from his Rich Millionaire/Billionaire Friends and Enemies! Is he on the verge of bankruptcy? being sued in a real estate deal or anything a gambling house owner could be sued?

Google Search; “trump soliciting funds” https://www.google.com/#q=trump+soliciting+funds

[TexasBushwhacker]

1. My guess is that he's not worth as much as he says he is

His taxes probably show that more of his businesses are in name only than he has disclosed and that the bulk of his income comes from reality TV. He may also have deductions that don't pass the smell test with voters, kind of like the Romney's claiming deductions for their dancing horse.

[yeoman6987]

2. He probably isn't but a tax return won't prove that

It's either he pays less then 10 percent in taxes or he doesn't give to charity. I think the charity is most likely. He can use the old well I'm using all the rules for the tax percent. His supporters will not be happy if he doesn't donate to charity.

[RiverNoord]

4. Really?

I think his supporters would be stunned if they saw he gave any significant sum to charity.

He's not running on or anywhere near altruism as a campaign issue.

[yeoman6987]

7. I just don't think his supporters will care if he

Paid 5 percent in taxes or some number like that. Maybe I'm wrong completely. But what other explanation can their be for not releasing them. They really don't provide much information in tax forms anyway.

[leftynyc]

22. That's why I think it's off shore accounts

he's trying to hide. THAT would piss off his supporters.

[RiverNoord]

24. Fair enough :-)

Personally, I don't think his supporters would care if 2/3 of his income was illegal and he managed to double that amount through rebates.

The scary thing is that he's already gone so far out there that he can now behave slightly worse in slow gradients and his supporters won't notice. But those who would have maybe tolerated Clinton as a barely acceptable alternative will notice, and many will start thinking 'maybe he's not so bad.'

This whole thing reminds me of a quote from 'The Hunt for Red October':

"This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it."

[Kingofalldems]

29. Good try.

[RiverNoord]

3. The problem is that the Clintons' own

tax returns are really hideous on their own.

And he could just say 'release the transcripts of your speeches and I'll release my tax returns.'

In which case, she loses, no matter what.

Why the hell is she going after him there?

[leftynyc]

23. Because releasing tax returns

is very common among presidential candidates since Nixon (can't think of one who hasn't). Nobody gives up transcripts to speeches. That's entirely new since Hillary ran which is why she should tell him (and Bernie) to stuff it.

[RiverNoord]

25. Um... Ok...

'nobody gives up transcripts to speeches.'

What are you basing that on? Transcripts of politicians' speeches are made publicly available in greater quantity than ears of corn in Iowa.

I have no idea what 'that's entirely new' means either. People with high public profiles give speeches all over the place - colleges and universities, sometimes business groups, 'think tanks,' fundraisers, you name it.

And they never have a reasonable expectation that their words aren't being recorded or transcribed, nor that they will not have to address concerns among people who find something they've said to be problematic or offensive.

So... the only difference, it seems to me, is that the 'new' part is that nobody actually has every paid anyone so much money over a span of time, with respect to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, especially in 2014, to deliver speeches. I mean, t's public knowledge that Hillary Clinton required a transcript of each speech to be made, paid for by the recipients of the speeches, and that she has possession of them. Does she think that the public doesn't deserve to see what she was talking about as close as a month before officially declaring her candidacy because they hadn't shelled out for it?

So she gets paid obscene sums of money to give speeches to business groups, requires them to make transcripts of the speeches, and says some things that are at direct odds to the things she says for free (yes, that's an assumption, but I'd take out a second mortgage on my home and bet every penny I've got on that being true). And, somehow, this is 'new,' and therefore not a valid vulnerability that could get her in serious trouble?

Nope. If anything problematic leaks from just one of those speeches, and it almost certainly will, she'll be sunk.

Look at flippin' Donald Trump. He's gone so far out there into looniesville that anything he says now that even has a whiff of reasonable will draw in people who would have rightly concluded that he's bonkers, but now will start thinking 'maybe he's not so bad.'

Clinton started out trying to seem like she'd be everyone's champion. Which, of course, can't happen since being some people's champion means being against some other people. She's got no wiggle room for unpleasant disclosures, since the stuff that's public already has people believing she's untrustworthy and dishonest.

That would be fine for Trump's demographic. Not for the people she is seeking votes from.

[apnu]

34. Yes but its never incumbent on the speech giver to provide transcripts.

Copies of those speeches come out because someone recorded it and released it. Its highly unusual to ask the speech giver to provide them. Besides, who keeps that stuff anyway? Except for self promotion, which Hillary does not need speech transcripts to do, I can't fathom why some one would hang on to their own speeches they gave.

[Matt_in_STL]

26. And releasing taxes wasn't common before Nixon

Time to create a new tradition.

[moriah]

28. I personally suspect the GS speeches are nothingburger that...

... Hillary wanted bigger game for releasing and proving they're nothingburgerness. In that case, Trump's returns would be a much better bargain and would, while perhaps not endear her to Bernie supporters or show the transparency they had a right to want far earlier, would be strategic.

It may also be that, while I know there was something that mentioned that she almost always had someone recording her words to make sure she wasn't misquoted by the companies she spoke to, that there was an agreement not to release them without the company's permission. If anyone can disprove that or can do a Google-fu mission before I get the chance, please, by all means, it would help me but I do plan to dig on that further.

The only known public speech (posted to YouTube by GS timely from late 2014) is here:

Since that's after the three paid speeches mentioned, it's possible she was speaking about some of those same issues.

Or not.

I mentioned before that supporting Hillary has involved a lot of faith in her on my part, and it's not something that is made easy by her own behavior or by the ongoing GOP attempts to smear her since I was 12. And the two are intricately related -- Bill and Hillary made the decision to not be transparent when only consensual affairs were alleged and assert a right to marital privacy, and as a result the GOP machine just HAD to find out whatever it was that these people were hiding. So they became more secretive, less transparent. And so on.

But read today, the August 1992 smear piece "Lady Macbeth of Little Rock" could read like a wonky endorsement of Hillary, given how much they harp on her being far more liberal than Bill and dragging him away from the Third Way. It's worth a read, though I shortlinked it here to not promote the site in Google ratings.

[joshcryer]

30. The transcripts are a perfect distraction.

Clinton is really not worried about them.

Knowing how Ken Starr spent 80 million to dredge something up on the Clinton's and all he could find was a BJ, is obvious that the Clinton's are super careful with their words and actions...

...hell, John Stewart basically complimented her in his round about way as she takes a minute to reply to a question.

[RiverNoord]

31. Thanks for the info and the link.

You may be right about the content of the speeches, but, well, I'd be stunned if that was the case.

I'm certain that you're correct about the arrangements with companies and organizations that paid Clinton for speeches. Disclosure would be a violation of the terms of the agreements, and probably actionably so. But that won't stop someone from leaking damaging stuff, if it exists.

The weirder thing would be if everything she was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for an hour of fluff. Over and over again. In that case, it would be even more obvious that she was simply being paid up front for potential services rendered later.

But, hell, the simple fact that she and her husband solicited and received such massive sums of money during a period of just over a year, especially from large international capital firms and medical software companies, ending only a month before her official candidacy announcement is, well, fundamentally bizarre. They had to assume that the public wouldn't see this as questionable behavior, which seems to me to say a lot about the presumed intelligence of Hillary Clinton's targeted demographic.

The smear piece certainly is interesting. It's garbage, of course, but what I find interesting is that she has, for years and years, deliberately veered hard away from the label of 'liberal.' I wear that badge with honor, and take honor very seriously. For example, I won't lie for my own benefit, under any circumstances. I will, if the alternative is for someone I care about to suffer needlessly. But that's it.

Hillary Clinton seems to have done everything conceivable since her husband's presidency to dodge association with the term. Either she really doesn't see herself as a liberal, or she made calculated choices to behave, over many years, so that applying the term to her would just be more and more absurd.

As a proud liberal, and an honest man, well, if it's the former, and if I had to guess there'd be no contest, it's very difficult for me to see the merit in decisions like that, or the behavior that such decisions result in.

[Mendocino]

5. An audit will not only show

his lack of net worth, but also all the convoluted methods of loopholes, offshore accounts and book cooking that he utilizes.

[mitty14u2]

8. Trump has 378 businesses registered in Delaware

Donald Trump revealed on Friday that he has nearly 400 business entities registered in the state of Delaware, a state that has received renewed scrutiny in the wake of the Panama Papers leak as a domestic tax haven.
 
During a campaign rally in Harrington, Delaware, the GOP presidential front-runner said he asked his staff to tell him how many businesses he has registered in the state.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/277326-trump-has-378-businesses-registered-in-delaware

Now Trump UN-Reality Show called Trumps run for President!

Tax returns, Trump we need to see The Presidents copy of his birth certificate for months, The Media asked for the President of The United States of America birth certificate hundreds of time on the ridicules so called news stations. Now Trump UN-Reality Show called Trumps run for President they make excuses.

[Mendocino]

12. My brother is an attorney.

He now does contracts and intellectual property, but started out in tax law. He is no democrat, but believes that DT is in up to his eyeballs in tax evasion.

[ViseGrip]

6. Everybody pays taxes and the rich pay less. I want to see her transcripts.

[mitty14u2]

9. GOP Change the Subject!

[turbinetree]

10. I and thousands of others agree with you-------------100%

Honk----------------for a political revolution Bernie 2016

[findrskeep]

11. EXACTLY.

Where's the transcripts??? It speaks volumes that she didn't release them. There's only ONE reason she wouldn't. Because there's stuff in there she doesn't want the voters to know about. Maybe he'll release his tax returns when she releases her transcripts.

[dana_b]

13. #ReleaseTheTranscripts

exactly. She has no right to demand anything when she won't hold up the end of a bargain that SHE made quite a while back.

[Plucketeer]

17. Heh - I'm wondering what percentage of those infamous transcripts

will be released with generous percentages of redaction! I can see:

"Good evening fellow millionaires! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------And in closing, let me thank you for the opportunity to earn a few bucks. I'll remember you people in 2016!

[EdwardBernays]

14. The problem

Is that Clinton also won't release things... She also has a history of promisinf transparency and then not following through. This will obviously undercut her attacks on Trump. And of course she's not seen as trustworthy.

Shame there's not someone running without those issues.

[7962]

15. I've never liked the tradition of releasing tax returns.

I can see turning them over to a bi-partisan group to take a look at, but I just dont think its any of my business to see the presidents returns any more than my doctors.
If there is anything wrong in them, it would be revealed by the group looking at them. Its not the law to release them, just tradition.

That being said, I imagine Trumps shows him bringing in far less income than we all expect.

[ManiacJoe]

27. I am with you on this.

[leftofcool]

16. Berners aren't going to like this.

[FreeState]

19. Im not sure who I am voting for still

But your right, read up thread.

[mitty14u2]

18. Changing the Subject will not work

Why, Who Cares about Trumps Billions in Tax Returns? he has decided that he doesn't have enough to run his own campaign he is now soliciting funds from Pacs to Millions from his Rich Millionaire/Billionaire Friends and Enemies! Is he on the verge of bankruptcy? being sued in a real estate deal or anything a gambling house owner could be sued?

Google Search; “trump soliciting funds” https://www.google.com/#q=trump+soliciting+funds

[onecaliberal]

20. The same reason she's not releasing the transcripts. Is she really stupid enough

To go there?

[mitty14u2]

21. Next Trump will be asking for Hillary's Birth Certificate!

[ConsiderThis_2016]

32. http://iwilllookintoit.com/

http://iwilllookintoit.com/

[mitty14u2]

33. Media Protects Trump at all Cost, The Cage Match, Big Show, Circus Extravaganza! “The Money Maker”

Trump is the cage match, the big show, the circus act that nobody has seen before, he is “The Money Maker”

The Media has made millions upon Millions on Trump, please don't talk negatively about Trumps Taxes, stop the story in its tracks, we cant have him knocked out early in the fight, he must go all 12 rounds to November, he is like gold for ratings. They will Protect Trump at all cost including today's hit by Hillary about Taxes.