The Bottom Line on Trump’s Taxes

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News, News Commentary, Daily News

4.3 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2020

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Donald Trump has spent the last four years refusing to release his tax returns. When the New York Times published 20 years worth of them, it revealed a possible reason why. The president’s balance sheet listed huge losses, which he used to dramatically cut down what he owed in taxes. Were these the dealings of a savvy businessman, or an unscrupulous swindler? And what does it mean for the election to have a candidate who still has a stake in their business and an alarming amount of debt? Guest: Andrea Bernstein, co-host of the Trump, Inc. podcast and the author of “American Oligarchs: the Kushners, the Trumps and the Marriage of Money and Power.” Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Podcast production by Mary Wilson, Jayson De Leon, Danielle Hewitt, and Elena Schwartz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	On Sunday night, when the New York Times dropped their epic report on two decades of Donald
0:09.2	Trump's tax returns, I saw this tweet start making the rounds.
0:13.4	We go live now to the offices of the Trump Inc. podcast, it read.
0:18.7	And then it attaches this gif of SpongeBob screaming while paper flies all around him.
0:25.4	Is that what you're yesterday was like?
0:27.6	I actually feel like the last three years and eight months have been like that.
0:34.6	Andrea Bernstein-Cohos, the Trump Inc. podcast.
0:37.6	She works with ProPublica and WNYC to decode the Trump family's financial records.
0:43.4	It's like this constant incoming and masses of paper and more and more and more documents
0:49.2	and we're like throwing them up in the air and we're reading them and it really did describe
0:54.7	the atmosphere of just being under this constant blizzard of documents, some of which are
1:01.8	revelatory and all of which require a large amount of attention.
1:06.6	I don't think you have to be a reporter to feel like you're drowning in paperwork like
1:10.5	this.
1:11.5	There's plenty of damning information about the Trump family going around.
1:15.2	There are tell all books, the nearly 500 page Mueller report.
1:19.9	And now this reporting in the New York Times, which meticulously builds a narrative of
1:25.2	the Trump family's real estate empire over the last 20 years.
1:29.6	What emerges from this work is a financial roller coaster.
1:33.8	Fat years when the family's fortunes seem to surge, followed by fallow years when losses
1:40.0	dominated the balance sheet.
1:42.1	And as the president entered the Oval Office in 2017, he seemed to be in the middle of
	...

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