The Democrats aren’t smart enough to understand Donald Trump’s tax returns, and they’re not even smart enough to stop demanding them, either.
Prominent Democrats have been calling on the president to release his tax returns since before he was even elected — a partisan gambit designed to let them weaponize and exploit his business background — and their demands have only grown more strident with the conclusion of Robert Mueller’s investigation and as we approach the 2020 presidential election.
Earlier this month, for instance, Illinois took a step closer to passing a law that would require presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on the state’s ballot, a measure that has also been proposed in 17 other states since Trump’s election. In other words, Democrats want to deny President Trump the right to run for office unless he agrees to their absurd demands.
BERNIE SANDERS CALLS ON TRUMP TO RELEASE TAX RETURNS DURING FOX NEWS TOWN HALL
Doing his part, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal has been demanding that the IRS provide his committee with six years’ worth of Trump’s personal and business tax returns, since the president has repeatedly explained that he will not release them.
“We are under audit, despite what people said, and working that out,” President Trump said in response to the renewed attack, adding that “until such time as I’m not under audit, I would not be inclined to do it.”
One of the president’s attorneys, William Consovoy, challenged the very legitimacy of Neal’s request, calling it an “abuse of power” and pointing out that no “legislative purpose” or “legitimate committee purpose” would be served by turning over the documents, which is the legal standard for such requests.
As White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders pointed out, these elected officials demanding the president’s tax returns aren’t even smart enough to discern anything from them, anyway.
People as wealthy as Donald Trump are generally under near-perpetual audit, which is why they employ an army of lawyers and accountants. Beyond just the legal considerations and his ongoing audits though, in my professional opinion, President Trump has very legitimate reasons to be cautious about turning his tax information over to his political enemies, ever.
As is the case for many successful businessmen, Donald Trump’s tax returns may reveal his trade secrets. For decades, he competed with some of America’s biggest real estate investors and designed a profitable business model that made his brand successful all around the globe.
Releasing every detail of his tax returns would severely undermine his business, giving his competitors a chance to implement strategies that have helped his company succeed or that might give them a competitive advantage.
Congressional Democrats probably wouldn’t be able to appropriately discern this from his tax returns, but there’s no doubt that it would be clear as day to any respectable business leader.
This political hit job isn’t really about transparency in government at all.
The truth is, any information that Democrats could possibly glean from Trump’s tax returns would necessarily be subject to interpretation. That would be too dangerous to entrust to partisan, obstructionist Democrats who have already demonstrated their willingness to concoct false allegations against this president.
In his pursuit of this wild goose chase, for instance, Rep. Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat, objected to Sarah Sanders’ assertion that Democrats are too dumb to understand the president’s tax returns with a challenge to “Try me.”
In reply, I gave Casten a chance to prove how much he actually knows about the tax code. If he can provide satisfactory answers to a quiz I’ve put together about the tax code, I’ve promised to publicly endorse the release of President Trump’s tax returns.
Unsurprisingly, I’m still waiting for a response from Casten, thus proving that he and his fellow Democrats must be too dumb to understand the president’s tax returns.
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They know full well that this political hit job isn’t really about transparency in government at all. It’s about rummaging through President Trump’s business history in hopes of finding something that can be cherry-picked, stripped of context, and used to justify further harassment of the duly-elected president of the United States — a president, by the way, whom the American people entrusted with the office even without inspecting his tax returns in 2016.
In the case of these Democrats who are out to get Trump, they’re just manufacturing yet another new crisis that’s bound to make them look foolish in the end because they’re just not that smart.
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