Category Archives: Trump
Trump Income Tax Short Form
Two pages of the 2005 Donald Trump income tax return fell in to the hands of Rachel Maddow last week. On her show she played it for all it was worth. It turns out it was worth about $38 million to Uncle Sam in taxes paid on an income of $150 million. That’s an effective rate of about 25%. The revelation made The Donald look good compared to accusations that he doesn’t pay any income taxes at all.
It also made him look good compared to Barack Obama’s 2015 effective rate of 18.5%, Bernie Sanders 2014 effective rate of 13.5%, and Mitt Romney’s 2011 rate of 14.1%
Even Van Jones called it a good night for Donald Trump.
The purloined returns showed up in the mailbox of journalist David Cay Johnston. He says he knows nothing. Revealing private income tax information is a felony.
Trump denies that he had anything to do with it.
Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been, In a Russian Golden Shower?
The right leaning New York Post, Townhall, and left leaning Nation editor and publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, writing in the Washington Post, have something in common. They all compare the senate Democrats’ obsession with Russians to McCarthyism of 50 years ago. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
It’s fitting and proper that a comedian got the ball rolling for the Jeff Sessions act in this Russian circus. Senator Al Franken based a question to Senator Sessions on a bogus story in Buzzfeed about a Russian dossier on Donald Trump. It claims Trump hired prostitutes to pee on a bed Barack and Michelle had slept on in a Russian hotel.
Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?
Franken asked the senator what he would do if there’s any evidence of contact with Russians in the course of the Trump campaign. Sessions replied, “Senator Franken, I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.” You can roll the tape here on Politifact.
Then, as night follows day, two meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak surfaced. One was in Sessions’ senate office. The other was a group introduction at the RNC in Cleveland. Senator Sessions says those meetings were in the course of his role as a senator and didn’t involve the Trump campaign.
Senator Claire McCaskill insisted that sort of thing just isn’t done. But her twitter account says otherwise.
Deep State Is No Deep Throat
Deep Throat was the secret source who led Woodward and Bernstein to break the Watergate story that brought down Richard Nixon.
I never heard of Deep State until a few weeks ago. That’s when quotes from unnamed sources started turning up in news stories about alleged connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. The anonymous sources came from intelligence in the permanent government known as the “Deep State.” That would be the state previously known as “the bureaucracy”.
The Resist Trump crowd is hoping Deep State will work some Deep Throat magic on Donald Trump
Deep State is no Deep Throat
Anyway, none of the Russian allegations were proven but they still managed to bring down National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Now the Deep State is following the same playbook to go after Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Rush Limbaugh thinks the Deep State is conspiring with the Mainstream Media to sabotage the Trump presidency. The muckraking investigative news website Consortiumnews.com seems to agree with Rush. Writing for Consortiumnews.com, Daniel Lazar quotes NYT reporters Glenn Thrush and Michale Grynbaum bragging that,”Trump is being force-fed lessons all presidents eventually learn – that the iron triangle of the Washington press corps, West Wing staff and federal bureaucracy is simply too powerful to bully.” Lazare – no fan of Trump – is skeptical:
Iron triangle? Permanent government? In its tale of how Trump went from being a favorite of the New York Post and Daily News to fodder for the big-time Washington news media, the Times seems to be going out of its way to confirm dark paranoid fears of a “deep state” lurking behind the scenes and dictating what political leaders can and cannot do.
…Entrenched interests are nothing new, of course. But a major news outlet bragging about collaborating with such elements in order to cripple a legally established government is.
…So if the conflict between president and the deep state ever comes down to a question of legitimacy, there is no doubt who will come out ahead: The Donald.
Trump Media Relations
Media relations with President Trump hit a new low when he dubbed the press the enemy of the American People. Last August The Atlantic compared Trump’s authoritarian tendencies to the rise of Mussolini. And two days after the election in November the New Republic claimed Trump was already acting like an authoritarian.
But National Review says he’s less authoritarian than Obama.
Media Relations
Vox says authoritarian states ain’t so bad.
Voter Fraud
Some Democrats insist there was no foreign voter fraud in the 2016 election. But they also insist the Russians got Trump elected. That, they claim, makes him an illegitimate president.
Holman Jenkins, writing in the WSJ, doesn’t buy it:
The idea of Mr. Trump as Russian agent is one more failure of imagination by the media—a striving to believe that some hidden, sinister logic explains his rise (and also excuses Robby Mook).
Robby Mook was Hillary’s campaign manager. He wants to pin his electoral failure on the Russians. “Incredibly scary,” says Mook.
Here’s what Jenkins has to say about intelligence leaks about links between Trump and Moscow:
All this smacks too much of the little Walter Mittys of our overfunded, underdelivering intelligence bureaucracy trying to punish Americans for how they voted.
