Our loss is his gain.
His loss was his biggest gain. Albert H. Teich / Shutterstock.com

The New York Times:


Donald J. Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years, records obtained by The New York Times show.

The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

The Trump campaign's statement in response to the NYT's request for comment is, predictably, priceless:

“Mr. Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the statement said. “That being said, Mr. Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes.”

The statement continued: “Mr. Trump knows the tax code far better than anyone who has ever run for President and he is the only one that knows how to fix it.”

At the Neptune Theatre a couple weeks ago, Mike Daisey performed The Trump Card, a very long, self-indulgent, and ultimately ho-hum monologue about Daisey's understanding of the racist dissembler running for president on the GOP ticket.

Despite the lackluster show, Daisey said something that gave me a new perspective on Trump's political game. It stuck with me. "The con artist always shows you the con," he said. He pointed to the fact that Trump uses his timely exit from the Atlantic City casino inferno as evidence of his business acumen, and not as evidence of his failure to run a business. So what do you expect him to do, Daisey asks, if he becomes president of this country? He'll come in, squeeze us dry, and dip out just before the White House collapses down around him. Clearly, he's already doing that.

I'm sure nobody reading this post is planning to vote for Trump, but if you know anyone who is, any hard-working family member who doesn't have access to special tax loopholes designed to maintain wealthy family dynasties, then you might fwd:fwd:fwd:fwd:fwd: this story along to them.