The 2016 candidate who campaigned on a platform of fixing a political system rigged in favor of the “millionaires and billionaires” had a few things to say about the recent revelation Republican nominee Donald Trump may have legally avoided paying taxes for up to 18 years.
“This is exactly why so many millions of Americans are frustrated, they are angry, they are disgusted at what they see is a corrupt political system in this country,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
A New York Times report published Saturday found that the $915 million in business losses Trump reported in 1995 was such an astronomical sum that it could have allowed the billionaire real estate mogul to avoid paying taxes for almost two decades.
“Trump goes around and says ‘Hey, I’m worth billions, I’m a successful businessman, but I don’t pay any taxes. But you, you make 15 bucks an hour, you pay the taxes, not me,’” Sanders said. “That is why people are angry and want real change in this country.”
The Vermont senator did not think much of Trump surrogates claiming that his ability to game the system proved that he was a “genius.”
Sanders, whose 2016 platform called for raising taxes, particularly on the highest income households, to pay for universal healthcare and higher education, argued that if everyone in the U.S. behaved like Trump “we would not have a country.”
“If Mr. Giuliani thinks that Mr. Trump is smart and all of the rest of us are dummies because we believe in America, we believe in our kids, we believe in national defense, well I think they have a very distorted view of the American people and what this country is about,” Sanders said.
Rudy Giuliani defends Trump’s remarks that Hillary Clinton hasn’t been “loyal” to Bill https://t.co/WLdCuenuRC https://t.co/CVX9Qmvu6Y
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 2, 2016
Correction: The original version of this post erroneously said that Donald Trump’s reported losses in 1995 were $915 billion. The correct figure is $915 million.
…annnnnnd, Bernie? This is the part where you tell us that HRC is going to do a better job cleaning up the swamp than Trump would ever do.
You know, push the nominee of the party that you are nominally part of?
Dishonest Don is pushing the idea that he alone can fix the tax system. Like most of his ideas, they sound better in the original German: Ich, ich allein!
What that mostly reveals is that Penn, Fordham and the New York Military Academy utterly failed in educating him about American government. Trump alone can’t do anything. All revenue bills must originate in the House of Representatives. Little Paulie Ryan will necessarily be a
hugeyuuuuuge part of any attempt to change the tax laws.Who believes that Little Paulie has the least interest in changing the tax laws in a way that makes them fairer?
Crickets
Yeah, I didn’t think so either.
Trump: If everyone was as smart as me, no one would pay any tax. None. That alone will cause the equality to go up and pay increase for everyone. I gain nothing as I dont pay any Federal Income Tax anyway.
What stuns me is that the people who support Trump don’t get that his behaviors, his gaming of the system, are why they are screwed and so frustrated with the system.
When he says, “I know the system, I’m smart, I’m a good businessman” he’s really saying, “I screwed you over and took money that should have gone to small business owners and their employees – people just like you – and made myself rich.”
Trump supporters are the exact same flag wavers that elected Bush II and Dick Vedar – twice. They totally bought the country club white boy does John Wayne scam. They also bought the whole Iraq War scam, and the majority of those US soldiers who were killed or maimed over there were their sons and daughters. They also bought the GOP trickle down scam. And the rich got richer and the 99% struggled. Nice.
Next these GOPers FINALLY realized they had been chumps. So what do they do? What they do best. Get scammed. This time they chose a facist clueless mentally ill egomaniac. A new level of stupid has been achieved.