Why? Because he wrote books and gave speeches? How is that source of income worrying?
Trump's income taxes published by NYT
- Thread starter Agema
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Biden was born on a pedestal. His 2017 report shows he fell off. He can do so again. In the circles he is traveling in, will $15 million last? Given what I wrote above, we have reason to worry.
Does anyone else appreciate that in a topic discussing how Trump repeatedly defrauds and cheats his business partners the argument just presented was "Trump has been telling us its a bad deal for 20 years" in regards to his political opponent?
What made it a bad deal, that the other side wasn't royally screwed over? That's how he measures a good deal, right?
What made it a bad deal, that the other side wasn't royally screwed over? That's how he measures a good deal, right?
He was in fact born into a working class family and while what he experienced during his youth might not qualify as poverty he certainly did not live a life of luxury or decadence.
One more time then.
You contradict yourself and negate any appearance of neutrality when the only thing you have to offer in regards to possible tax evasion by the man holding the highest office in the US boils down to "Everyone does it and usually they do it in a legal way".
That is a defense. You are, actively, offering a defense of whatever actions Trump took. And then you go on to claim that you never said it was okay to minimize tax payments, when just a page or two earlier you said that most people do it and that it is legal. You even add that you don't consider or care about the morality of it.
Being neutral means not taking a side, but when you come out screaming that it was probably all legal you are taking a side, you're making, and defending, an assumption that clearly benefits a specific party. Don't hide behind a fake neutrality, just come out and say that you don't care that the president might be a lying, cheating, scumbag, you think the press and a great deal of the population is treating him in an unfair way and you want to argue in favour of this man whom you believe is being unjustly accused. Most of us can probably accept that, but don't lie to us and pretend to be some paragon of neutrality.
Trump is not an outsider! Jesus christ. He's exactly the kind of deep pockets rich guy who's been gaming the system for goddammned decades. People like him are as much a part of the political corruption as the politicians who helped line their pockets. Trump was just the first one to get his nose directly in the trough himself.
Were this correct, the Legacy media would not be in all out war with him. They are.
Yes, he has played the game. It's what they do. But he isn't following their script (see China policy changes for example) and they are pissed.
Reviewing: the fall from the pedestal may have preceded Biden's birth but his family, at one time reportedly had wealth and lost it. Since that time, they have used Government to enrich themselves. Which, is what they (so many people in politics, regardless of party) do. Maybe he's no worse than a Nancy Pelosi et. al. But at $15 million, he seems a lot more vulnerable than a guy worth $2.5-3 billion that may have up to $500 million to pay off.
Well, no, the money owed doesn't make him a national risk, nobody's saying that. But it speaks to his character that he would evade/avoid that much tax through questionable accounting, it speaks to his business acumen that he would consistently make such enormous losses, and it speaks to his trustworthiness that he would conceal it all from the voters.
It's already been covered elsewhere that Hunter Biden is not considered "unemployable", as nobody gives a shit about a drug-related discharge from the military.
But yeah, it's very likely that Hunter received roles in part, or mostly, because of his family connections. That's pretty normal for relatives of American politicians. Why would you be more concerned about Hunter holding a position on a board of a Ukrainian energy company, than with various members of the Trump family receiving positions for which they have no experience within the Executive of the US Government?
The latter is a far more egregious example of nepotism. The various members of the Trump family have less relevant experience than Hunter, and have more direct access to US state secrets than Hunter. They have more power and have leveraged more money than Hunter.
You'd have to wait for him to do anything particularly positive in order to test this hypothesis. His most notable interventions into medical science have just been muddying waters and contradicting experts on the current pandemic, presiding over one of the worst responses to the virus on the planet, and then boasting about how wonderfully everything's going.
And yeah, the guy who inherited millions and millions of dollars, who inherited enormous businesses, who rides in golden elevators, is an outsider.
Are you really trying to insinuate that a president needs to be an out of touch billionaire?! Where I come from people look down upon (extremely) wealthy politicians because they are considered to be out of touch with the average people. I guess your way is one to look at it...
What really amazes me is that you're more worried about a millionaire politician who hasn't been directly involved in shady business rather than a billionaire who has repeatedly been involved in shady business and who refuses to make his tax returns public. He's actively preventing people to to vet his wealth and interests and that doesn't worry you? Another noteworthy point is that his "worth" is based on the assets he owns and not the cash he has. And the value of those assets may very well be dependend on his ability to finance their operations and his ability to cash in on them (which can be a problem if they are located in foreign countries). And as such he may be forced to act against national interests to keep his assets at their value (or grow them). Which is likely not an issue with someone who doesn't own assets a bit everywhere.
I disagree. I am not commenting on Trump's actions. I am commenting on the recurring headline: "______ pays [some low number] in taxes!"
As evidence, can you point out where I mentioned Trump in post #23? No you can't, because I didn't mention him.
"most people do it" and "it is legal" does not mean "it is okay".
I suggest that you read post #88, as @Cheetodust explains this perfectly.
I think this is where the misunderstanding is coming from. I am not commenting about "it", where "it" means this specific case about Trump's taxes. I'm commenting on that recurring headline
If I were, that wouldn't even be against neutrality.
For example, if someone were to say "Democrats are all, individually and literally, rapists and murderers!" and if I were to say "That's absurd! There's no way that so many people could be criminals-at-large", that wouldn't be "defending" democrats. It would be pointing out a false statement. One doesn't have to be a democrat to disagree with the idea that, say, Hillary is a lizard person.
Please read that Wikipedia article again (or for the first time, by the looks of it), because I don't think you know what the word even means.
I could claim all those things and still be neutral.
For a man who is suspicious of being run by Harvard elites, you're pretty much asking for just about no-one but them to run the country with comments like that.
Trump by definition isn't an outsider though. You can't be both part of the 1% and an outsider. You can't be an openly corrupt businessman and an outsider at the same time. At best Trump is an outsider in the sense that he's a member of the business elite rather than the political elite but that distinction is not meaningful in the US. Trump is and has always been part of the ruling class of the US. He was born as one and thoroughly identifies himself as a rich businessman.
I also think its the other way around. The ''establishment'' could cure cancer tomorrow, only for the populists and their cult to depict them as horrible monsters for not having cured cancer today instead.
He literally shits on a golden fucking toilet for Christ's sake.
Donald Trump is a walking stereotype for "rich out of touch coastal elite". But because he says awful things about minorities, you have poor rural folk from Podunk, Kansas talking about how he "tells it like it is" and "cares about us".
I think the "outsider" image refers to the context of not being a career politician.
Here we go with the semantics again, are seriously trying to argue that in a thread about Donald Trump possibly evading taxes your comment on how most do it and it is often legal is not a defense of Trump?
If that is the case, then why the heck are you even here? This isn't about a comment on a recurring headline, this is about a specific case, if you are serious about your claim then you're making a point that has no bearing on the current situation, just stating a fact with little to no relation to the topic at hand. The only reason anyone would do such a thing is to either A) Derail the debate or B) Defend the person in question. Neither of which is particularly neutral.
I concede, once in power, Trump dropped people like Bannon to ingratiate himself with Wall Street, who he did not owe. A lot of his base feels betrayed by that. Given the TDS for him in the legacy media, I have to think he is still doing some things correctly.
But Trump wouldn't cure cancer.
He'd tell you cancer was going to magically just go away and disappear. He'd tell you they're doing work, amazing beautiful work, and cancer will be cured in three months, and then three years later still nothing. He'd tell you don't need sun lotion, or to stop smoking, or stop bathing in radioactive waste. He'd start a charity to combat cancer that mishandled funds and would funnel donors' money to his own pockets and be shut down for fraud. He'd pay a firm to research cancer treatments in his name, and not pay them for their work.
Because that is Donald Trump.
Donald Trump, for at least 30 if not 40 years, has a non-stop career of lying, cheating in his personal life, cheating in his business dealings, fraud, failure, contract breaches, and so on. And he's taken all that into politics too. To say the the "legacy media" (which really means the last journalistic outlets who think things like checking facts and checking sources has any value at all - Journalism 2.0 has done away with that crap because it's all about the echo chamber opinions, baby) can't say a nice thing about him is the most feeble disguise of the fact that Donald Trump is a walking, talking, moral abcess. Even worse than that, where he does have some apparent policy he's grotesquely ineffectual. It should be under $50 billion to build a wall: chump change by US government standards. His one, stand-out, signature policy, and he couldn't even do that.
Correct.
I read the words of the OP, which reminded me of a recurring headline "_____ paid [some low number] in taxes!" and commented on that.
Many people have quoted that post and responded to it. They didn't say anything about it being off-topic, or about it being derailing. You're the only one who seems to have a problem with it.
Trump doesn't give a shit about his base. To him they're disgusting, muddy, stupid peasants whom he wants nowhere near him or his luxurious palaces like Mar-a-Lago. They're the losers who put themselves in harms way for their country. They're rubes. Fools to pack stadia and cheer him, and turn out to vote for him on empty promises. Trump has one, big skill: he can spot a sucker a mile off and trick them into handing over their money (or in this case, votes).
This is truly the saddest thing about the Trump base. They put so much stock in a man who has nothing but contempt for them in return.
Which in itself speaks of a warped and limited view on exactly who the insiders are. A businessman might not be a career politician in his own right but in the States the two sides are completely interwoven with each other.
One could easily argue that the business elite are the worse kind of elite. After all they are often responsible to some degree for the corruption found in politicians, are not bound by term limits nor elections and have no other priority except making money. Its no surprise an administration directly run by the business elite is the most corrupt administration in decades.