Golly, it seems as if the oldest scion of the Trump family may not know what he’s talking about. Who could have guessed? Via Oliver Willis:
BRIAN KILMEADE, Fox News: It goes on and on for days, but you guys’ organization have $300 million in loans due in the next three years. What could you tell us about that story?
DONALD TRUMP JR.: Listen, it’s ridiculous. My father’s paid tens of millions of taxes. If he does things in certain years where you get depreciation, where you get write off, where you get historical tax credits, like we did when we took on the risk of building the Old Post Office in D.C., it’s the perfect example.
That was literally a government contract. We bid against every hotel company in the world. Historical tax credits that you use to offset tax payments for taking the risk to build that. That was done under the Obama administration. It literally took an act of Congress to get it done.
So with that comes historical tax credits. That’s the reality. People don’t understand what goes into a business. It doesn’t include property taxes, it doesn’t include payroll taxes, it doesn’t include real estate taxes, it doesn’t include so many of the things that he has been paying taxes on forever as he’s also putting thousands and thousands of people to work on an annual basis.
But of course the New York Times does this. They put out a selective, you know, picture of all of these things the day before a debate to try to give someone like Joe Biden, you know, an attack line. They come up with one or two catchy sound bites, and that’s the game.
He may not be able to explain why rich people don’t have to pay income taxes while the rest of us do but you have to be impressed by the fact that he’s become such a good little wingnut. That combination of Trumpian whining combined with right-wing grievance and verbal gobbledygook is such a perfect combination.
*And yes, there is such a thing as “historic tax credits” and it may have applied to the old Post Office. But that doesn’t explain the 11 years out of the last 18 in which Trump paid no taxes. It’s not like he’s been doing nothing but restoring old buildings.