Donald Trump’s tax papers hold the secret to beating the system
May 17, 2016, 6:09 AM | Updated: 8:29 am
KIRO Radio's Dave Ross says Donald Trump has a lot to teach us about manipulating people. (AP)
(AP)
Donald Trump has a lot to teach us about how to manipulate an audience.
First, he feeds the media stories it can’t help but cover. He uses simple headline-grabbing words like phony, terrible, crazy, radical, desperate, incompetent, pathetic, ridiculous, dopey and of course, crooked.
Related: Does Donald Trump have a doppelganger?
Then, even as he feeds the media, he selectively starves it by not releasing his tax returns. This has baited news organizations into dispatching their top reporters, not to analyze his policy positions, but to comb through public tax records.
ABC revealed, for example, that when he bought his yacht 30 years ago, he avoided paying any New Jersey sales tax. When he built a $50 million golf course in New York, his lawyers initially got it valued on the tax rolls at only $1.3 million.
Of course, this is all intended to shame him, but what reporters don’t get is that avoiding taxes is not something Americans condemn – it’s something they aspire to.
Which brings me to my main beef: even though withholding those returns is clever, it is also cruel, Mr. Trump. Because your tax papers hold the secret to beating the system without getting arrested. For you to know that secret and not share it, it is like Benjamin Franklin discovering electricity and not telling anybody.
Don’t be cruel, Donald. Share your genius! We don’t want to be stupid anymore. And then you wouldn’t need Congress to pass your tax cuts. Taxes would cut themselves!
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Tune in to KIRO Newsradio weekdays at 5am for Dave Ross on Seattle's Morning News.
