Yesterday my plans were changed, so I got to sit on my couch, sipping coffee, and watching the morning news talk shows on all the stations except the one that had a football game on.
Rudolph Giuliani was on all of them.
On the first show he had obviously sat on his glasses, or walked into a wall because the part on the bridge of his nose was slightly twisted so one lens was the way it should have been and the other was tipping a bit forward. He looked like his eyes were two different sizes, and I had the irresistible urge to tell him to take them off and straighten the lenses, or just take them off.
I yelled at the TV.
He had about 30 minutes between appearances, and as he appeared on the second show with straight lenses, I figured either he had heard me, or someone in his camp had seen what I had, and straighten them out.
Although the glasses had become straighter, his defense of Trump not paying taxes didn’t.
He wants to make America great again, and to do that Trump has to let us know that there are those like us who pay taxes, lots of taxes, and those others who pay little if any. What he means by those are poor people.
Too much has been given to those who do not contribute.
That is why he has condemned President Obama for paying “only” 20.5% of his income in taxes, low income people for not paying income taxes, billionaires for avoiding paying federal taxes and Amazon for not paying “fair taxes.”
He also said in 2012,
“The hedge fund guys are getting away with murder. They make a fortune, they pay no tax. It’s ridiculous, OK? I know people that are making a tremendous amount of money and paying virtually tax and I think it’s unfair”.
And in 2011 in response to a question about President Obama’s having said that well-to-do Americans should make a sacrifice for the country by paying more in taxes. He said,
“Well, I don’t mind sacrificing for the country to be honest with you. But you know, you do have a problem because half of the people don’t pay any tax. And when he’s talking about that he’s talking about people that aren’t also working, that are not contributing to this society. And it’s a problem. But we have 50 percent. It just hit the 50 percent mark. Fifty percent of the people are paying no tax.”
Although he won’t let the American people see his tax returns, he first used the excuse he was being audited, and then having his son say we are too stupid to understand their nuances, Trump has bragged about how much he pays in taxes without giving an actual figure, and bemoans that successful people are punished by heavy taxes.
During the first presidential debate, when Hillary said he probably has paid no taxes for years, Trump jumped in and declared that that was because he was smart.
After it came out that Trump, the business genius, had declared a loss of over $900 million in the 1990s, Rudy 9/11 Giuliani did the rounds of the Sunday talk shows to defend his overlord and explain why Trump’s not paying taxes was a sign of his business genius.
Look at the positives and negative generic soft viagra aspects of their business and ask them questions. Kidneys are cheap super cialis not only to produce hormones in our body they also regulate blood pressure level in a constant rate. Eating for erections? Like, seriously? Yes, the title may have surprised you, but it is absolutely cialis tadalafil generico true. The presence of xenoestrogens, which means estrogen that is not produced within the body, is disrupting the natural hormonal balance and leads to the early onset of andropause. cheapest viagra uk First, he was smart enough to declare a huge business loss to get out of paying future taxes for a while, but then turned around and became a huge business success.
While he was not paying taxes, he was, however, getting public money to build his, that should actually be “our”, empire.
In denying that Trump’s almost billion dollar loss in one year shows he was not a good businessman, Giuliani said,
“Every great man has had failures. In “The Art of the Deal” he explains that. Churchill was thrown out of office twice. Steve Jobs was fired from Apple and had nothing. The reality is this man, 26 years ago, had some failures, and then he built an empire. I like that working for me, for the United States”.
He also threw in a sexist dig by saying,
“He’s a genius at how to take advantage of legal remedies that can help your company survive and grow. I want a man who’s a genius at figuring out how to take this country, that’s — moving in the wrong direction, where we’ve had a basically jobless recovery, where we’ve had growth of less than 2 percent for two years. That’s pathetic! Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman, and the only thing she’s ever produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out her e-mails”.
And as far as Trump’s having an advantage that the regular guy didn’t get, Giuliani added,
“I also know most that most Americans take advantage of every deduction and every legal opportunity there is to save some taxes so that they don’t have to pay as much as they are paying to the government. I know most Americans — I know most Americans would rather be paying lower taxes under Donald Trump than ten percent or twenty percent more under Hillary Clinton”.
He went on to say,
“A lot of the people who are poor take advantage of loopholes, and pay no taxes”.
He also claimed that poor people could have a $30 business loss and carry it over to the next year. It is a loophole they take advantage of.
Excuse me, but I do not see poor people being in that position. If they are poor, they don’t have businesses. So Rudy seemed to attempt to show that Trump did exactly what poor people would do in similar circumstances.
Not sure if Giuliani really believes that, but having sold his soul to Trump, he does have to defend him no matter how difficult that is.
A principled man would just walk away with his dignity in tact. Perhaps after this tap dance Rudy will do just that.
In the meantime, perhaps the Trump supporters will begin to see that he does not really represent them, but is using them.
Certainly they cannot, as taxpayers, especially those in the Tea Party wing, accept that while they pay their taxes, he not only uses every possible loophole to avoid paying his-and did he really have a $900 million loss, or just used that figure to game the system-, but has been able to use their tax dollars to build his empire having also used tax funded infrastructures to aid in that.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me, Fool me on an ongoing basis, and you have my vote