After The New York Times revealed Donald Trump is compromised by $421 million in debt coming due, Fox News “populist” Steve Hilton only seemed concerned about whether the reporting would hurt Trump’s reelection chances.
Yesterday, The New York Times dropped a bombshell after it obtained and reviewed more than 20 years of Donald Trump’s “tax return data.”
I’m not a tax expert but I know a BFD when I see one. The reporting is so dense and so significant, the Times has a separate article with 18 key findings. In addition to the debt, the article reveals this “billionaire” paid only $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017, his properties are struggling and he seems about as honest and ethical with his accounting as he is about everything else.
But as MSNBC’s business correspondent and anchor Stephanie Ruhle put it, what really matters is the national security issue:
According to the @nytimes, @realDonaldTrump has a $300mm personal loan outstanding.
— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) September 28, 2020
We do not know who the lender is.
It is 💯 appropriate for that information to be public given the power & influence of the Oval Office https://t.co/jW4QpPRSE2
AGAIN - THIS IS A NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE.@realDonaldTrump is in the hospitality business- do you think hotels are at full capacity?
— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) September 28, 2020
How will his lenders get treated in the coming years... they’ve got a lot of $$ coming due. https://t.co/VNpSVrF6NZ
Embarrassing @realDonaldTrump about not being as rich as he claims to be will not change anything.
— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) September 27, 2020
Using this reporting to prove he:
- lied to the IRS/cheated on his taxes
- hid his financing sources & put his personal biz interests over our national security
WILL
Sunday night, “positive populist” and billionaire Trumper Fox News host Steve Hilton was clearly worried about the Times report, not because of the national security implications of a Commander-in-Chief on the hook for $421 million nor any of the other revelations that prove Trump's a fraud but because of the possible effect it could have on Trump’s re-election.
Hilton briefly discussed the issue at the end of a discussion with pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson. She reassured Hilton (and the Viewer-in-Chief) that it’s no biggie.
HILTON: A quick last question. This tax returns hit job, as I called it. I don’t want to dignify it by calling it a story, ‘cause I think it just seems so orchestrated, to line up just before the first debate.
What do you think? Will that affect the election any way?
ANDERSON: If Donald Trump was running for president for the first time, maybe. Because a big part of his argument was that he’s a successful businessman and that doesn’t necessarily square with a report that you’ve lost money every year for, you know, X number of years.
However, I think part of that argument was, hey, vote for me, I’ll be good on the economy because of my business record. Now, it’s less important what his business record was whether you like or don’t like the president. As the economy we’ve had under President Trump, his business record is somewhat less material.
HILTON: Mmm.
ANDERSON: So I think there is some risk because there may be a lot of Americans that go, wait a minute, I paid more than $750 in taxes last year, who are personally upset to hear that, but I do think it may have less of an effect because people are already judging President Trump’s economic record on his own numbers rather than on it as a hypothetical thing –
HILTON: Yeah.
ANDERSON: based on Trump’s business record.
HILTON: I think that’s so right. It’s people’s real experience, and when it comes to the economy, you know, their increase in income and reduction in taxes, thanks to the president’s policies. I think that’s gonna be the clincher. Very smart point. Thank you so much.
By the way, “populist” billionaire Hilton probably had an increase in income and a reduction in taxes but, as I wrote in my previous post, there are millions of Americans unemployed, unable to properly feed themselves and their children and, oh yeah, there’s a pandemic going on.
Peter Strzok, former FBI Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence, called the Times article “a roadmap of some of the ways Trump is compromised.” He added, “In the hands of a hostile intel service, these millions of dollars represent coercive leverage” over Trump “as a result of undisclosed foreign financial deals while he was President.”
You can watch Hilton and Anderson ignore the implications of Trump’s financial problems below, from the September 27, 2020 The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton.
The election was over. ELECTIONS were over. America’s 45th and Final President basked in the afterglow, an afterglow every occupant of the White House was acutely aware of, as were a significant number of residents and passers-by downwind from 1600 Pennsylvania.