Donald Trump Proves The Standard Of Making Tax Returns Public Is That People Don’t Care
The call for Donald Trump by the media to release his tax returns has opened up the conversation on what “the standard” should be for presidential candidates running for office when it comes to making financial records public.
There is no doubt now that this year’s election with Donald Trump is unlike any election anyone has ever experienced, where a new precedent has been set in which some candidates are no longer at risk for not releasing any financial information to the public, much less anything else.
As early back as 2012, there was a reluctance by some candidates to release that kind of information, just like Mitt Romney did when he was then the presidential nominee.
“His tax return from last year reveals he made $21 million, yet paid a lower tax rate than many middle class families. Now Romney’s proposing a huge new $150,000 tax cut for the wealthiest one percent, while cutting Medicare and education for us.”
Forbes has a series of articles published on his tax return dodge back then, and now he’s one of the few voices of interest who are coming out to demand that Donald Trump release his.
Even then, Donald Trump — who was also running for the oval office — demanded that Romney release his tax returns.
The RNC Chairman Reince Priebus was on Face The Nation last weekend when he was asked about Donald Trump’s denial that he was representing himself under a different name years ago during a business call, to which the chairman said it wasn’t something that people were interested in.
Journalist and host of the program John Dickerson defended the question, but Priebus again said that such interest didn’t have any value among the American people.
He was then asked about Donald Trump’s refusal to show his tax returns, to which Priebus again said he wouldn’t be surprised if people didn’t care.
What Reince Priebus also pointed out was that when the same scrutiny was applied to the other candidates, it was effective, but those same tactics don’t work for Donald Trump. Therefore, it wouldn’t make any difference, and John Dickerson addressed “the standard.”
“I guess the question is, whether political success changes the standard by which we evaluate a candidate. When Bill Clinton was successful in politics a lot of Republicans said, ‘you know that shouldn’t changed the standard, he should still be judged on the old fashion standard, don’t let his political success, create a kind of relativism that changes our standards.'”
While Priebus agreed that this was a good point, he said that it wouldn’t matter to this electorate.
But the RNC chairman also said that even after Bill Clinton had served his full term decades later, people still get excited about him now, and he used that as the example of comparing the scrutiny against Trump and how it really didn’t matter after all.
And while he was saying this, the subtle pause in his response could have been hinting at the Monica Lewinsky scandal that forced a Republican held congress to file the impeachment proceeding against Bill Clinton during the last years of his presidency as something that never really damaged his reputation since his wife is now running for office.
Hillary Clinton, however, has said that in comparison to Donald Trump, she has released her tax returns, and there are already plenty of sources out there who have published them, including her website.
And there are even many people out there who have said during these reports — of Donald Trump not releasing his tax returns — that she should release her’s, without knowing that she already had. The fact that they don’t already know this might also throw some weight behind Reince Priebus’ belief that people don’t actually care.
[Photo by J. David Ake/AP Images]
