Trump as the “genius”
Donald Trump has had a media frenzy surrounding the issue of whether or not he paid his taxes in the preceding 20 years. It would be expected for him to lose support as information has recently come out indicating that he has not paid taxes, yet
it seems as though the opposite is true. Surrogates who are prominent Republican figures, such as Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani, have been at the front of the movement to bring up the “brilliance” in evading tax payment. Christie went as far as stating “there’s no one who’s shown more genius in their way to maneuver around the tax code.” [Politico] Christie has used this as an example of the ways in which the tax code is extremely messed up and Trump’s ability to maneuver the tax code shows precisely why he should be the one to fix it while he tries to “Make America Great Again.”
Two Wrongs Definitely Make a Right
In an article by the Washington Post, Giuliani is quoted talking about how poor people also do not pay their taxes (ignoring entirely that many of them do not make enough to pay taxes). Even if the poor had chosen not to pay taxes, how does this justify Trump not paying his? One major issue that has yet to be addressed by Trump’s surrogate speakers is the following: if it was “no big deal” and was a “genius move” on Trump’s part, then why keep it a secret for so long? It seems evident that Trump saw the wrong in his actions and was afraid that it would hurt his political prospects, so he tried to hide the documentation. Instead, they default to “the poor people did it, so he can do it too,” making it pretty evident that they never learned a basic childhood lesson: two wrongs do not make a right.
Why not just apologize?
Rather than going with the traditional ways of giving speeches of apologia when faced with a divisive issue (as Clinton has on multiple occasions with her emails), it seems like Trump and his surrogate speakers have gone with a much different route of apologia; one in which they try to make the action seem legitimate rather than controversial. This should not come as a surprise, however, given Trump’s attempts to paint himself as a bold, unapologetic figure.
Great Post. The part that I found most off with Guliani’s response about poor people not paying taxes is that it’s comparing apples and oranges. The Tax deduction that Trump used was a business loss that was able to be used to cover Personal Income Taxes. Based on Guliani’s logic, a poor person would have to also be a real estate developer. There are probably a lot of Real Estate Developers that are now poor, but not the kind of poor people Guiliani is trying to compare with Trump.