 So over the weekend, the New York Times released a lot of information about Donald Trump's coveted tax returns. And we're gonna talk about all of that and some of the revelations from this report. But before we do that, I have to share this tweet from Donald Trump that he put out on April 13th of 2012 where he says, Barack Obama, who wants to raise all our taxes, only pays 20.5% on a $790,000 salary. Do as I say, not as I do. Yeah, as we all know now, that aged like milk. It might be the worst aged Trump tweet of all time. And there's a lot of them, but there's a lot in this story. And before we even get to the specific details, we're also going to address the impact that this may or may not have on the election. I think that this is important. I think the details here matter and it would be smart for Joe Biden and Democrats to hit him on these details. But I want people to understand that you can't let this distract you from the real crisis here that we're facing. COVID-19, 200,000 plus Americans have died. And I don't think that this scandal is larger than that. He bungled COVID-19. He's the one who stopped the Postal Service from distributing five masks to each family. He's the one who lied to us about the severity of COVID-19. So I think that it is important for everyone to not, you know, get bogged down by the details of this story. But it is still super important. And I think that there is a possibility that this can actually hurt him electorally. But by how much it's really difficult to gauge. But before we get to all of that, let's actually talk about what the New York Times reports. So to give you a broad overview, they describe, quote, a recurring pattern of ascent and decline. Where basically, you know, there's been times when he's been just straight up broke, but he also had times where he was relatively successful. He stumbled upon lucrative ventures such as being the co-owner of the Miss Universe pageant, as well as his time as a reality television show star when he hosted The Apprentice. But overall, he's in really bad shape. And it's infuriating to know that he's not paying his fair share of taxes. In fact, you're paying more than Donald Trump. I guarantee it. Yes, you watching this video. So they explain Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750. He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years, largely because he reported losing much more money than he made. As the president wages a reelection campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress. Bisset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade long audit battle with the internal revenue service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed and received after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million. Now we just have to pause for a moment and reflect on the fact that in 10 of the 15 years he paid zero in taxes. How infuriating is that? You pay more than the president of the United States in taxes. Like I get that we've heard this over the weekend and like it's something that maybe we're desensitized to. And honestly, if you've been paying attention, this isn't shocking that elites, you know, large multinational corporations and millionaires and billionaires get away with things like this. But we shouldn't allow ourselves to accept this as the norm and become desensitized to it because this really is outrageous. You may be working at a job where you get maybe a little bit over minimum wage. You don't make a living wage, you make less than $15 an hour and you are getting more money taken out of your check than the president. Like how frustrating is that to think about? Like to actually see it because we know that this is happening but when you see it laid out like this, it just, it is infuriating. Now what we have to acknowledge is that this isn't just like Trump bad. That's why he didn't do this. This is a systemic flaw within our system. Yes, Donald Trump is a fraud. Yes, he's a tax dodger. But our system is what allows people like Donald Trump to get away with things like this. I think that Bernie Sanders put out a phenomenal tweet where he says, yes, Trump's not alone. Federal income tax is paid by corporations a year after his tax plan was signed into law. $0 from Amazon, 0 from GM, 0 from Netflix, 0 from Chevron, FedEx, Eli Lilly, Starbucks. Dr. King was right. We have socialism for the rich, rugged capitalism for the rest. So it is important that we shame Donald Trump for this. In fact, I think that Joe Biden selling bumper stickers that say I paid more in taxes than Donald Trump. I think that that's clever, but I don't want people to get too, you know, bogged down by the Trump angle. I mean, sure, you have to shame him. This is an election, so strategically it makes sense to do that. But understand, you can't just not acknowledge the elephant in the room. And that is our late stage capitalist system that allows elites like Donald Trump to get away with this. Like he is taking advantage of a corrupt system that shifts the tax burden away from elites and onto working class Americans. So if you are going to try to convince your friends, you know, how outrageous this is and get them to not vote for Donald Trump or whatever, like you do have to point that out. This is an issue with our system. It's not just Donald Trump, even if yes, he is a greedy elites and an oligarch. But the way that he was able to get away with paying basically nothing in taxes is really interesting. So they explained Mr. Trump has written off as business expenses costs, including fuel and meals associated with his aircraft, used to shuttle him among his various homes and properties. Likewise, the cost of haircuts, including the more than $70,000 paid to style his hair during the apprentice. Together, nine Trump entities have written off at least $95,464 paid to a favorite hair and makeup artist of Ivanka Trump. In allowing business expenses to be deducted, the IRS requires that they may be ordinary and necessary, a loosely defined standard often interpreted generously by business owners. So basically, he wrote off everything. And what stood out to me the most is the $70,000, $70,000 plus dollars that he paid for his hair to a stylist. I mean, if you paid that much for your hairstyle that you need to come over, you need to get your money back. Or I should correct myself. We need to get our money back because we're the ones who foot the bill for that hairstylist. Where do you even find someone who charges that much? Like people who are elites like Donald Trump, they live in a different universe than you and I. Like, can you imagine like if I tried to go somewhere in Portland and pay more than $1,000 for a haircut, I would struggle because I don't even know who charges that much. And I would refuse to pay more than probably like, I don't know, $50 for a really, really good haircut, including tip because I'm a tightwad. But I mean, like you paid $70,000 and you deducted that, fuck you. I mean, I'm on the humanist report. This is technically a business. If I pay for a haircut, do I get to deduct that because I haven't been. I think that that's probably not something that would be deemed ordinary and necessary by the IRS, but he doesn't even care. Like he's shameless. He's writing off everything, you know, me going from mansion to mansion. I'm going to write off that, you know, travel expense. He's just shameless. But on top of that, his write-offs, they're not just ridiculous and shameless. They also, as we're going to find out from this next paragraph, wreak a fraud, abuse, corruption, and nepotism. Because he cited $747,622 that he deducted in quote-unquote consulting fees. And conspicuously enough, it looks like he paid his daughter Ivanka Trump for that. Quote, the consultants are not identified in the tax records, but evidence of his arrangement was gleaned by comparing the confidential tax records to the financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she joined the White House staff in 2017. Ms. Trump reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned totaling $747,622 that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for Hotel Projects in Vancouver and Hawaii. So he writes off hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees to his daughter, to his daughter. Doesn't say that, but when they connect the dots, they find out that the amount that he supposedly paid in consulting fees that he wants to write off went to Ivanka Trump. Do we really believe that she's consulting him? No. And when I hear about this, this really reminds me of the 2018 report from the New York Times when they actually extensively detailed the fraud that Trump's family committed. And you know, basically him and his father and his whole family actually, they committed this scheme to avoid paying taxes when he died and passed down that wealth by fraudulently hiding that money and moving it around. And we're seeing shades of that here. So I mean, you know, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. He got his wealth because his dad left him a lot of money and he's trying to do the same thing, benefit Ivanka, or money that would otherwise go to the government. He's making sure it goes to his daughter. Maybe she gives it back to him. I don't know, but I don't care. That is nepotism and we're footing the bill for this rich oligarchy family. Now, it's more than just like the tax fraud. There is a huge angle to this story that people have to acknowledge and grapple with. There is extensive violations of the emoluments clause, conflicts of interest that amount to an impeachable offense. And I get it. We already went through the impeachment debacle as some will call it. He should have been impeached, but he wasn't. But I always contended that he needed to be impeached also because of his violations of the emoluments clause. And if you weren't on board before, then this should get you on board because it shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Donald Trump is not operating in good faith on behalf of the United States knowing that all of these foreign governments are making him money. They argue against the backdrop, the records go much further toward revealing the actual and potential conflicts of interest created by Mr. Trump's refusal to divest himself of his business interests while in the White House. His properties have become bazaars for collecting money directly from lobbyists, foreign officials and others seeking face time, access or favor. The records for the first time put precise dollar figures on those transactions. At the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, a flood of new members starting in 2015 allowed him to pocket an additional $5 million a year from the business. In 2017, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association paid at least $397,602 to the Washington Hotel where the group held at least one event during its four-day world summit in defense of persecuted Christians. The Times was also able to take the fullest measure to date of the president's income from overseas where he holds ultimate sway over American diplomacy. When he took office, Mr. Trump said he would pursue no new foreign deals as president. Even so, his first two years in the White House, his revenue from abroad totaled $73 million. And while much of that money was from his golf properties in Scotland and Ireland, some came from licensing deals in countries with authoritarian leading leaders or thorny geopolitics. For example, $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India and $1 million from Turkey. He reported paying taxes in turn on a number of his overseas ventures. In 2017, the president's $750 contribution to the operations of the U.S. government was dwarfed by the $15,598 he or his companies paid in Panama. The $145,400 in India and $156,824 in the Philippines. So how are we supposed to believe that when he acts as a diplomat on behalf of the United States, he's not just doing things to benefit himself. I mean, he's paying more taxes to these governments than he is to the United States. How are we not supposed to suggest that, you know, his loyalty lies with them? I get that we're kind of waiting into the same argument that they were making with regard to the Russiagate scandal, but this is actually something that we have that's tangible. He's paying more money to the Philippines. He has business dealings with these other countries. They're making money for his organization. He's personally profiting. And we're just supposed to sit back and accept this. I mean, this is what the emoluments clause is for. But yet, nothing. Not even really much noise about this aspect of this story, which I think is really important, if not the most important aspect of this story. Now, you have the details for the most part. This is kind of just a simplified view of the entire story. I'll link to it down below if you want to read the entire article. It is really, really long, but it's important. However, the question that I'm asking is, will any of this matter when it comes to the election? And I think that it has the potential to matter. But the problem is that Democrats oftentimes, they're just not good at driving narratives. What I saw on Twitter was a lot of people, mostly, you know, Donut, Sanctress, neoliberal Twitter, shaming him for being broke. That's tone deaf. You know, if you take this approach, then you are kind of ignoring the fact that a lot of Americans are broke, and they can kind of see that as, oh, we'll see, it's just these, you know, coastal elites shaming Donald Trump for being broke. But maybe because he's broke, he can identify with someone like me because I'm also broke. Like, that's not the way that you want to go about this. However, if they focus on the fact that, you know, elites like him pay little to no taxes and you have to foot the bill like you personally are paying more and losing money because people like him don't pay their fair share, that can resonate. Again, I want this to be a critique of the system and I don't think Democrats are savvy enough or even willing to do that because they don't want to change the system. So basically the only way I can see this actually landing for Democrats is if they focus on the corruption and the conflicts of interest. I think that Donald Trump was able to succeed because he was running against someone like Hillary Clinton who was so corrupt and we all knew that Trump had these corrupt business dealings and he was, you know, a fraudulent businessman with the Trump University and Trump organizations. But now he's in power, so it lands more like the attacks are different. So if Joe Biden tries to attack him for this, I think it could work. Although the problem is that Trump can just turn around and say, well look at Hunter Biden, look at the nepotism there with him working for, you know, a Ukrainian energy company when he had no experience and he was making all this money. He can easily turn this around. And what I fear is that if Trump turns this around, Republicans are a lot more disciplined in messaging and could quickly backfire for Democrats. So like it's frustrating because this really is a scandal. Like if this were 1985 or 1992, this would end someone's campaign. But because we live in the Trump era, I think that things like this won't necessarily land. But I think that what you have to focus on if we're being strategic and we just want to beat Donald Trump is COVID-19. 200,000 Americans died under Trump's watch. So I think that it is important that you bring this up and you hit him on this. But if Democrats are going to even attack the corruption angle, I mean, if we're not anticipating any action and impeachment trial in 2021, then I feel like it's all hopeless. Like it's just going to encourage people or influence people to think, well look, you said he's corrupt, but now you're not prosecuting him. And I would never expect Democrats to do this. If they were going to prosecute anyone, it would have been George W. Bush and Dick Cheney when Obama took office. So I think that the best thing that Democrats can do going forward is to focus on COVID-19 because this really is the thing that is impacting everyone right now. It's the number one issue and it's where he basically blew it. But with that being said, I don't want to give you this impression that this story isn't important because it really is important. In the Trump era, you really have to pick and choose your battles. And even though this is something that, you know, at the individual level, we can use to maybe drive outrage with our friends and family and get them to not vote for Trump or not support Trump, but they realize that it's really unfair that they're paying more than him. But if I see Democrats like trying to capitalize on this story, I just see them face planting and it's sad. But they're so bad at messaging and driving and creating a narrative that I can only see them fucking up if they hyper-focus on this. So I think that what they need to do is focus on COVID-19 and for us, we can use this to try to appeal to working-class people because it really is outrageous that, you know, Donald Trump is paying less in taxes than you're paying. How insane is that? You may work in McDonald's or in retail and the President of the United States paid way less than you. Like, that is outrageous. That is infuriating. It's infuriating. So, you know, when it comes to the question is, will any of this matter? I am leaning towards a could. That treats me so unfairly.