QUESTIONS WE’D LIKE TO ASK THE PRESIDENT AT TONIGHT’S DEBATE
Afew questions for Donald Trump at Tuesday’s presidential debate. Mr. Trump, a barista at Starbucks who earns $20,000 a year pays $760 in federal income taxes. Why did you pay $10 a year less in 2016 and 2017?
Mr. Trump, the average American paid about $12,200 in federal income taxes in 2017, but you paid nothing at all in 10 of the past 15 years. How did you pull that off ?
Mr. Trump, Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, paid $3.7 million in federal income taxes in 2017 and $1.5 million in 2018 — about a third of their adjusted gross income. Who’s the wealthier man standing on this stage tonight?
While we’re talking about the Bidens, Mr. Trump, Joe and Jill gave $1,275,000 to charity in those two years. How’s your charitable giving going?
On lying
Mr. Trump, on presidential financial disclosures forms — what you told the voters — you claimed to have earned at least $434.9 million in 2018. But in your tax filings — what you told the IRS — you reported a $47.4 million loss in 2018. The New York Times blew your cover on Sunday. Were you lying to the country or lying to the IRS?
Mr. Trump, the Times reported that your entire facade of brilliant business acumen and wealth is about to come crashing down. You personally are on the hook to pay back $421 million in loans in the next four years, and the IRS is looking at clawing back $72.9 million in tax refunds, plus interest. Should we trust that a president in such desperate financial straits, and of such low character, will put our nation’s interests above his own?
Speaking of which, Mr. Trump, how much worse shape would your business empire be in today — ballpark figure — if you were not already monetizing the presidency? Your hotels and golf courses, as the Times revealed, have become “bazaars for collecting money directly from lobbyists, foreign officials and others seeking face time, access or favor.”
Revenues from initiation fees at your Mar-a-Lago club have skyrocketed while you have been president, allowing you to take $26 million out of the business from 2015 through 2018, three times what you paid yourself in prior years. Companies and groups eager to win your favor — like Bank of America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Walgreens — have spent tens of millions of dollars to hold events and rent space at your properties.
On foreign conflicts of interest
Mr. Trump, the Times revealed that your financial bottom line depends heavily — even more than previously reported — on foreign investors and governments. Should we be worried, sir?
When, for example, Turkish business interests directly lobby you for more American trade, as they have, should we be concerned that the chief lobbyist previously helped you cut a deal to build two Trump towers in Istanbul that have earned you at least $13 million?
Mr. Trump, is it fair to question the patriotism of a president who pays more in taxes to several foreign nations, including the Philippines, India and Panama, than to the United States of America? You’re paying more into their armed forces than ours.
Mr. Trump, to whom else do you owe tens of millions of dollars? Shouldn’t the American people be fully informed of all your conflicts of interest before you make another call to another foreign leader?
On Ivanka’s big payday
Mr. Trump, why are you paying your daughter Ivanka twice for the same job?
The Times discovered that the Trump Organization paid Ivanka $747,622 for “consulting” work on hotel deals though she already was an employee of the company. A cynic, sir, might say you did this to reduce your taxable income and transfer assets to your daughter without incurring a gift tax.
Mr. Trump, on another matter. Seventy thousand dollars to style your hair?
Mr. Trump. Ninety-five thousand dollars to style Ivanka’s hair?
Mr. Trump, you say the Times investigation is “totally fake news.” But you have not cited a single factual inaccuracy. Please do so now. If you can.
Mr. Trump, will you agree to release your tax returns tomorrow morning so the American people can judge for themselves who’s putting out “totally fake news?”
On working at Starbucks
Mr. Trump, help us understand. You consistently lose tens of millions of dollars more than you take in. You lose so much — and claim so many dubious expenses — that you hardly pay income taxes. Are you a) A pitifully inept businessman; b) A tax dodger; c) A con man; or d) All of the above?
Mr. Trump, once you’re out of office, your creditors and the IRS could close in fast. Do you fear losing it all?
Or might you be OK with working at Starbucks, sir, except for the higher taxes?
MR. TRUMP, IS IT FAIR TO QUESTION THE PATRIOTISM OF A PRESIDENT WHO PAYS MORE IN TAXES TO SEVERAL FOREIGN NATIONS, INCLUDING THE PHILIPPINES, INDIA AND PANAMA, THAN TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?
Upon the untimely death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Donald Trump promised to name “a woman” to fill her seat, as if the sum of Ginsburg’s identity was her gender.
In fact, the woman that Trump has nominated — Amy Coney Barrett — is an insult to all that Ginsburg stood for.
We witnessed this cynical ploy before when George Bush chose a black man — Clarence Thomas — to fill the seat of Thurgood Marshall, the champion of civil rights. Although of the same race, the two were of opposing judicial complexions. The nomination of Thomas, like that of Barrett, demonstrated scorn, not respect, for the civil rights heroes they were named to replace.
Barrett’s appointment is the first since Clarence Thomas that transforms the ideological balance of the Supreme Court. A radical right-wing justice is replacing a progressive champion. The conservative successors oppose the very advances that opened the doors for them to sit where they are.
Thurgood Marshall was the legal giant who sculpted the campaign to challenge segregation, ultimately winning Brown v. Board of Education that ruled it unconstitutional.
As a justice, he wrote many decisions that expanded civil rights and criminal justice protections, particularly for racial minorities. Clarence Thomas had neither Marshall’s qualifications nor his record. In his decades on the court, Thomas is famous mostly for his hostility toward civil rights, affirmative action and the rights of the accused. His furious dissents are so extreme that he often stands alone.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was known as the Thurgood Marshall of gender equality. She litigated the lawsuits that eventually led the Supreme Court to rule that sexual discrimination was unconstitutional. As a justice, she continued that work. Even in dissent, her arguments were so compelling that the “Notorious RBG” moved Congress to act when the conservative majority of the court refused to.
Barrett has benefited from the triumph of the women’s movement. A mother of seven, she was able to balance family life and career in the law largely because Ginsburg and others broke down the locked doors and busted through the glass ceilings that so limited women of earlier generations. Sadly, Barrett espouses an ideological agenda that would undermine the very rights that Ginsburg fought so successfully for. And unlike Thomas, her addition to the Supreme Court now consolidates the right-wing, pro-corporate majority.
In the Senate hearings on her nomination, Barrett will no doubt seek to soften her record. She’ll likely claim to be an “originalist” as opposed to an activist judge. She’ll perhaps nod to the importance of precedent and duck any questions about substance.
Do not be deluded. Behind the gentle smile and experienced academic, Barrett is a committed ideologue, well vetted by right-wing judicial activists. She claims to be someone grounded in the original intention of the founders, but notes that some changes are baked into society, leaving her free to decide what stands and what falls. She says judicial precedent isn’t important if the original case is decided incorrectly, leaving her free to discard precedents like Roe v. Wade, which she opposes.
If she is confirmed, the right-wing majority on the court will be emboldened. The Affordable Care Act, which the Trump administration seeks to have overturned, affirmative action, sensible controls on guns, and centrally, women’s right to an abortion are all likely to be weakened or overturned. Moreover, an emboldened conservative majority will expand its efforts to limit the power of Congress to protect the environment, to get money out of politics, to regulate big corporations or to tax wealth.
Worse, Barrett’s nomination — made when people have already started voting in a presidential election — maliciously denies Americans a voice in who should make this lifetime appointment.
Worried about losing the election, Trump and his Republican Senate enablers are rushing to confirm someone they assume is out of step with the majority of the country. Barrett has been nominated by a president elected with a minority of the popular vote and would be confirmed by a Senate majority representing a minority of the voters. Worse, Trump argues that the nomination must be rushed through before the election so that Barrett is in place when the legal challenges to the election that he is planning come before the Supreme Court.
The Senate should allow the people to elect the president who makes this lifetime appointment. If Republicans force the issue, Barrett should make it clear that she will remove herself from any case relating to the election.
Nothing will do more to undermine the legitimacy of the court and the viability of this Republic than for a Trump nominee, crammed through at the last moment, to sit on cases brought to frustrate the will of the electorate and calling on the court’s conservative majority to decide who the president will be.