Tax Cheat

True! Now we have proof that Trump is a pitifully inept businessman and a serial tax avoider crushed by massive debts.

Well, either all of us dipshits are right and he's been a complete failure at business or he's a business genius and owes the IRS a lot of money. Which is it, Mr. Trump BootLicker?

What it *actually* appears is that Trump has not been legally manipulating the tax system but rather lying about both his profits and his losses, and could actually owe as much as $100 million in unpaid taxes. So this isn't about him "working the system", it's about him doing what he does best: lying. In this case, it also makes him a criminal.

Gotta love the $75,000 deduction for haircuts and overpaying his daughter as a write-off. I wonder if she was able to deduct her fake boobs and nose job as business expenses?

Assuming your anonymous sources are correct. Do you have any actual legitimate sources?

I'm sure there's nothing I can write here that you would consider legitimate so let's not pretend.

Some of Trump's financial information was leaked to a reporter for the New York Times. If you want to play some game and suggest that it's all fake then go ahead, believe in fairies and unicorns too. It's the only way to hold tight to your little version of reality. The rest of the world understands Trump is a criminal, as he has been (clearly) for decades. He even admits (publicly) to almost all of it. His son is on record talking about how they owe the Russians a lot of money.

You could show some sources that would be legitimate. I have yet to see a leftist do that though. They usually link to a fact checking site owned and ran by the same people they are supposed to be policing or CNN who constantly lies.
I'll gladly read the article and then show the actual facts in linked sources. I'm open to debate.
You mention the times, but their source is anonymous and can't be vetted, they don't provide any verifiable facts, so at best its a rumor. You can call that believing in unicorns and fairies, but in reality it is you who are believing in fantasy. I'm firmly grounded in verifiable facts.
My version of reality is based on verifiable facts.
When you say "The rest of the world" you are talking about a vast diversity of people. Many countries completely agree with Trump. Others hate him because he's making them pay their fair share in treaties and agreements.
I'd like to see some sources for Trump being a criminal.
I'd like to see some sources for his son talking about how they owe the Russian's a lot of money.
So far no one has provided verifiable sources on these things.

First of all, thank you for being civil. It is appreciated.

Second, I don't consider myself a "leftist". I realize the political spectrum in the last 30 years has swung far enough right that people who used to be center are now on the left, and in that sense I am left of center, but I would hardly think radically. I've been studying political science and following both US and international politics since the 1980s.

In one of my political science courses in university the professor had our class engage in an exercise where we were challenged to put every media source we could think of on a chalk line on the blackboard, left to right. Then we were asked to judge how reliable were the sources. It wasn't easy. The ones at the fringes tended to be regarded by most people as less reliable but sometimes even they published well-researched articles. There were questions of audience, ownership, agenda, whether they had an editorial board and how it was run, etc.

I read about seven or eight newspapers across the spectrum (The New York Times, The Guardian, Nikkei, Al Jazeera, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The London Times) and about five or six magazines (some specialist mags like Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs) and then again, across the spectrum with The Economist, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker. I wouldn't think anyone would regard my sources of information as radical. They're all either relatively near the center or are expert mags comprised from views on all sides. But some sources are outright propaganda or simply bad quality journalism. You'll note I don't bother with CNN, MSNBC, Breitbart, Russia Today, etc. I sometimes look there to see what messages are being promulgated but I wouldn't consider them reliable.

I admit I use them as a source because the New York Times has a long history (over 160 years) of reliable journalism, it's independently owned and run by the Sulzberger family (for four generations), has a strong editorial board, and has long been considered (worldwide) as one of the most reliable sources of news. Trump and his people call anyone who disagrees with him radical or leftist, but the NYT is not that.

I bristled when you used the word "verifiable" because at some level nothing is verifiable, if you refuse to accept the veracity of any source, particularly ones you disagree with.

In my 20s I did a lot of research into first century Palestine, the Dead Sea Scrolls, early Christianity. I had about 250-300 books in my study on the subject. I hadn't read them all cover-to-cover but understood much of it. The library represented hundreds of authors and many thousands of researchers of all stripes. A friend asked me to --publicly-- debate a born-again Christian as he wanted to videotape it and show it to his father, who was pressuring him on religion.

It was the most useless exercise. Even if I had brought all my books with me and had them all cross-referenced my debate opponent would simply say I had to cite my source. Then he'd ask what their source was. It was a rabbit hole impossible to go down. At some point one has to accept the veracity of a source, or more correctly, read as widely as possible and judge for each source whether to accept their view. Basically look across all sources and come to judgements as to what is a consensus view.

The problem nowadays is that most people get their news from FaceBook, RT, and a lot of conspiracy websites (like Robert Kennedy's), and even AI-generated websites that cross-validate each other and appear professional. These are sites with little or no history, dubious backgrounds, and wild ideas. I recently chatted with someone I consider very intelligent who is now heading into QAnon territory, and it was frightening to think I couldn't deter her from that journey.

What propaganda aims to do is destroy the ability of a populace to create a consensus view, to divide people up as much as possible, to destroy the notion of truth. That's what Steve Bannon meant when he said "flood the zone with shit". They're doing that.

So no, I don't expect you to believe *me*. We don't know each other, nor could I ever convince you that anything I've said is true. But there are many, many sources of information on Trump's history of malfeasance and criminality, and a lot of it has come up over the years in sworn testimony in court cases (both state and federal), and he's been widely known to engage in criminal activity long before became president. Wikipedia even has a page listing the lawsuits against him, *with* sources.

You can Google on "trump son admits russian ties", look at and cross-verify the sources. E.g., Business Insider (hardly radical) has an article: '“In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump Jr. said during a conference in New York in 2008.' There are other articles where Donald Jr. admits in interviews he was trying to get information on Clinton direclty from the Russians.

Finally, as I mentioned, bizarrely Trump himself has publicly admitted (in interviews, tweets, on TV or on mic) to many of the things he's done. It's to the point where he's essentially challenging anyone to stop him from becoming America's autocrat. He's got the backing of huge money, the entire Republican establishment, evangelical Christians (who want abortion overturned), and the NRA. Not to mention the extreme right.

So when multiple headline articles on the New York Times spill a detailed story that describes Trump's financial woes, with a subsequent statement by the Times' editorial board backing the articles, years and years of lawsuits over his finances, and I combine that with the longstanding news about Trump refusing to release his tax returns for over four years now, well, I would accept that the articles are likely true. Verifiable? By what means? At some point you either accept a source or you don't. Getting information from FaceBook, RT, or some fly-by-night website? I don't.

When the majority of evidence (over decades) is that he's a dishonest and failed businessman with known verifiable financial ties to the Russians (both publicly admitted and in financial statements), well, you can make your own judgment about that. If you want a reputable source, try this article by Michael Hirsh of Foreign Policy magazine:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/

There's also many articles on his dubious relationship with Deutsche Bank, this one on National Public Radio:

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/19/807191309/dark-towers-exposes-chaos-and-corruption-at-the-bank-that-holds-trump-s-secrets

If Trump has nothing to hide in his tax returns he would have released them long ago and eliminated any controversy. He owes the American people some honesty about his finances before the 2020 election, and his ties to Russian oligarchs.

Congress wrote the tax code. Trump just used it. Let’s see Pelosi and Schumer’s taxes.

We still want to see Clumpy's- recall him saying he would release them??

Yeah, and we've now found out he "used it" illegally. He broke the rules and his IRS audit is precisely about him lying about a $79 million deduction that doesn't look legitimate. If he is proven guilty he'll owe the IRS up to $100 million.

And as was pointed out, none of the released tax information provides us with an answer on how much he's tied into Russian oligarchs (and Putin) financially, which explains why he often acts more loyal to Russia than he does to America.