When the New York Times bombshell Donald Trump tax story broke on Sunday night, the President reacted in the way everyone would expect him to. He lashed out at the “fake news” report and claimed that he paid a lot in taxes.
The reality is, however, that the Times has copies of the documents and the numbers are almost assuredly accurate. So on Monday morning, a number of Conservative commentators claimed that Trump was smart for gaming his taxes and that the documents were “illegally obtained.”
It is unclear which spin would work better than the other. According to Fox News’ political editor, Chris Stirewalt, the president is going to have to choose one or the other.
Host Bret Baier asked, “Chris, it’s going to come up at the debate tomorrow night. Your thoughts on the story and how it plays?”
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“TheTimessays the $100 million is on the line for Trump. It could be a bank breaker for him according to the story,†he responded. “He’s in a difficult position because on the one hand he says ‘totally fake news’ but also then he has to say it was ‘illegally gotten’ and it can’t be both illegally gotten and fake I don’t think. So, that’s a pickle.”
The Fox commentator also felt that this story will hurt Trump. He told Baier, “Four years ago Donald Trump was an unknown commodity in a lot of way. He is a known commodity in every way now and I just see this as moving a lot of votes.”
Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey based politics and technology writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books and spending time at the shore with his family.
