Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:18 pm
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“People who believe they have a legal duty to put self-interest before the public interest don’t belong in public service,” two former White House ethics lawyers explain in the New York Times. These are the words of two people whose job it was to review tax returns of presidents and nominees to the president’s cabinet and other positions.
This destroys the Republican argument that Donald Trump is so smart to avoid paying taxes and he’s doing some great thing when he acts selfishly.
If it’s not good enough for the cabinet, it’s not good enough for the office of the presidency.
Norman Eisen, chief White House ethics lawyer from 2009 to 2011 and Richard W. Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007, explained in the New York Times just how central tax returns are for cabinet members and other positions. They write, “Based on the few pages of Donald J. Trump’s 1995 tax returns that have become public, we have come to the conclusion that no one in his position would have been nominated, much less confirmed by the Senate, during either of the administrations we served. The same is true of any modern administration of a president from either party.”
Someone in Trump’s position would not even be nominated, let alone confirmed, under either party.
“If a presidential candidate cannot meet that standard, then we question his qualifications for the highest office in the land,” they write.
As to the idea that not paying taxes is legal, maybe. But “In both the Bush and Obama administrations, a bad attitude about paying taxes was a deal killer.” They even specifically call out instances of doomed nominations by the “arguably legal but unsavory use of tax loopholes”.
Sure, if Republicans can pull this off it will be the heist of a generation – after all, this has been their goal, to convince the public that the rich and corporations shouldn’t have to pay anything because they are so great. If they can convince the public that it’s super smart to be a selfish, greedy, unpatriotic business failure, well– that would be quite an achievement.
And then there’s the issue of being a public servant.
“Any nominee who had told either of us that he had a ‘fiduciary responsibility’ as a businessman or to his family to pay as little tax as possible, as Mr. Trump put it, would have been told to stop wasting the president’s time. People who believe they have a legal duty to put self-interest before the public interest don’t belong in public service.”
They also unravel the false notion that Trump has a “fiduciary duty” to not pay taxes on his personal income. “That, as we’ve said before, is called greed.”
Greed. The chief White House ethics lawyers under both Bush and Obama call what Donald Trump did “greed”.
They explain that they asked nominees for Senate-confirmed positions to provide tax information, and this is “most important to national security and the economy… Neither of us can recall a single nominee who refused, and with good reason. If the White House were to so much as delay in disclosing the tax returns of a nominee, much less tell the Senate that a nominee did not want to disclose them, the nomination would be dead on arrival.”
DOA for even delaying. We are almost 30 days out and Trump still won’t release his tax returns.
No one is asking Donald Trump to do something exceptional.
Donald Trump has business dealings with our political enemies, and business dealings and debt in this country that could not help but influence his decisions. Trump has already told us that he is greedy and proud of being greedy. There is no reason to assume that his lifelong personality would change when he got into the White House. So it is logical to see him using the White House to benefit himself — something he surely needs after a lifetime of horrible business management, and with no father to bail him out anymore.
Not only is the Republican defense of Donald Trump exposing the flimsy Republican argument for the tax laws they defend and fight for, but the American people are not impressed. Sixty-seven percent of Americans said it is “selfish” for a presidential candidate to pay no taxes, while 61% said it is “unpatriotic,” according to an online Reuters/Ipsos poll . Sure some of them think it’s “smart”, but selfish and unpatriotic are not acceptable for lower positions, so why should America lower the bar once again for Donald Trump.
America has bent over backward for Donald Trump to accommodate his lack of knowledge and give him a pat on the back for doing the most basic things required of a candidate, but he still won’t even release his tax returns. Enough coddling of Donald Trump. He’s not entitled to special treatment, and he should have to do what every other person being considered for the job has to do – show his taxes and pay some taxes.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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