NYT Report On Donald Trump Taxes Begs The Question: Who Is Paying Trump? | The Last Word | MSNBC

our first guest tonight as I just mentioned is one of the reporters who delivered the breaking news of the night in The New York Times the breaking news tonight is that the New York Times has obtained ten years of Donald Trump's tax information the New York Times report tells us three big things one Gulf Trump doesn't pay taxes to Donald Trump loses massive amounts of money in business and three Donald Trump has always been financially dependent on his father those are all things that Donald Trump does not want voters to know about his financial life all of those things clash with the image of successful businessman that Donald Trump presents to his supporters it is possible that these six years of tax returns that have been legally demanded from the IRS by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal would reveal a similar pattern for Donald Trump possibly with financial supporters other than his father like perhaps a Russian oligarch or two those tax returns are being illegally withheld from Chairman Neil by Treasury Secretary Stephen itchin but chairman Neil will eventually succeed in them too in obtaining those tax returns because the law is entirely on his side in the meantime though tonight's New York Times reporting is the most detailed picture yet of ten years of Donald Trump's financial life from 1985 to 1994 and it shows Donald Trump declaring losses of 1 billion dollars over that 10-year period while paying relatively small amounts of federal income taxes in only two of the 10 years in eight of those years Donald Trump paid no taxes at all one year shows a mysterious surge in interest income for Donald Trump of fifty two point nine million dollars with no accompanying evidence of any assets that could produce that much interest but Donald Trump paid no taxes that year because his business losses were higher than that interest income in the middle of the period studied by the New York Times Donald Trump testified to Congress about just how hard it was out there for a businessman like him the real-estate business were in an absolute depression I see no no sign of any kind of an upturn at all there's no incentive to do anything there's no incentive to invest everyone's doing badly everyone well not everyone as the New York Times points out Donald Trump's father who was a much more stable businessman than his son did consistently well during those same years The Times reports while Donald Trump reported hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for 1990 and 1991 Fred Trump's returns showed a positive income of fifty three point nine million with only one major loss fifteen million dollars invested in his son's latest apartment project and leading us off in our discussion tonight is Susanne Craig she's a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for The New York Times she co-authored tonight's report in The New York Times the piece is entitled decade in the red Trump tax figures show over 1 billion in business losses also joining us for a political perspective on this Jon Hamm of national affairs analyst for NBC News and MSNBC he is co host and executive Cruz from show times the circus and David Kaye Jostens with us he's a former Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for The New York Times tax reporter for the next time she's now with report org he has previously reported on much of Donald Trump's financial Empire and Suzanne let's begin with this exhaustive ten-year study you've done you did not obtain tax returns but you did obtain what appears to be internal IRS documents about the copy of the Travis transcript of his ire of his tax return so it's not the tax return it's a transcript of his tax returns for this period and that's something that has to have leaked out of the IRS okay the transportation show no answer at that particular point you know you are you clearly are protecting sources in this and these but the source material that is being used or are basically worksheets that the IRS maintains on a gun text that's right when they when they're going to talk to tax payers they'll use these to summarize what what's going on with with the taxpayer it's not there it's not the the tax return is not the only record that the IRS keeps of what's going on with the taxpayer there's other things including the record that we have and these contain the big pictures a return would show us a lot more detail yeah what was frustrating about our project you know we have so much information as a reporter I'm always focused on what we didn't get and and we don't have a lot of the schedules which show for example you mentioned there's this like huge surge in interest income for one of the years that we had 1989 and we can you know as 50 plus million it was one of the largest interest income ever disclosed by taxpayer in that year and we don't have the schedules that show the source of that and it really like it was really frustrating because we had a lot of transparency into Donald Trump's finances at the time because the casino Commission's were all over him yeah that's important but let's just really in a certain point one big window you have into this is that because he was a casino operator in New Jersey he had to hand over a lot of financial documentation to the Gaming Commission that controls casinos we couldn't have had a better window in assets in terms of finding out what this mystery number was because he had he was under scrutiny because of all the failures that he had New Jersey were the casinos and we couldn't figure out where this interest income was coming from and it really underscores to me the importance you know when you're sort of looking at why is this important now it's important now because we need to understand the sources of his income and we have the number we don't have the schedules that show here's all the people that were paying him money that's super important what do you think this package of information suggests to us about the most recent six years of tax returns that chairman Neal is trying to obtain there's potentially a lot of sources of income that we just don't understand and even if we get the front page of the tax return that the 1040 is we call it we still need to see the schedules and we need to understand like this the schedules and all the partnership and from backing it up you know Donald Trump has had these these he's at a tweet where he's like are my tax returns this big we need to get all of that information to fully understand where his money is coming from this is a person who is in the White House he's an elected official we don't understand the hidden hat we don't understand who's paying them now I really never expected his personal tax return information to be this revealing because what I wrongly assumed was that he had a bunch of different corporations and all these business activities are taking place in separate corporations we didn't even necessarily know the names of them but it turns out he works in partnerships as you report in The Times and partnership income basically only gets accounted for in personal tax returns you know when it all flows onto his top return you know initially when I been covering dogs from toxins down through two or three years just day in and day out and initially I thought the reason he didn't want us to see his tax returns is because he's not it's gonna show he's not making as much money as I thought or I think we kind of laid bare like he's not the greatest businessman on earth but the fact that he is fighting and he is suing his bank his accounting firm and all these people to stop his tax returns from becoming public it suggests to me that there's a lot more there than just I'm not that great at business there's some there's something hidden about where are the sources of his income are and that's sort of where we're looking now and I think some of the things that we saw in these earlier tox returns I think really foreshadow like the fight that we're gonna see now and that's what I'm looking for is just and that number really didn't know where who's behind this interest income we'd love to know and I I'd love to see their current you know the modern tax returns didn't it but we just want we don't just want to see the 1040 we want to see the sources of income on it let me bring in another tax expert David Cay Johnston who won his Pulitzer Prize for tax reporting for the New York Times and David I want to get your reading of what you've learned tonight in this in this these new documents well they show that Donald's myth that he's the modern Mitas is complete utterly false that instead of creating wealth he's a massive wealth destroyer in fact the time points out that one year he apparently accounted for about 1% of all the reported business losses in the country hundreds of millions of people out there so it's all a fraud and he's a con artist essentially Suzanne and his partner her partner Ross Buettner have pulled back the curtain on the wizard and shown that he's a con artist and Americans need to begin understanding that and the backs big question we need to go to is so after Fred Trump died who was it who kept putting money out there for Donald to keep his money-losing enterprises going not that we don't have some idea of who that might be perhaps a wealthy man living in Eastern Europe well the David that's exactly my point in my introductory script here was when I was reading Suzanne all of the support that Fred Trump maintained for his son through so many losing ventures that becomes habitual for someone like Donald Trump that you that you you who's who replaces Fred Trump in this picture in the 21st century one of the people is Mark Burnett from The Apprentice there's no question about that I mean he becomes an important source of income but we really don't know in the modern tax returns the last pages of the tax returns that we have that were made public David Kay Johnson was mailed them in 2005 when we just don't have any window into the modern era of his finances and one of the incredible things about Trump's finances is they're so shifting and that's what we even just found out from you know we've been following him now since birth to kind of 1995 and he's a corporate stock writer that didn't really work out he's doing marketing it you know worked out it didn't like there's so many iterations of his businesses and the modern tax returns are more or less kind of a black hole for us in terms of what are the sources of it what is the business mix and how successful has it been we know so little about it and you know as somebody who's just watching all this the most important thing is what is the hidden hat and in who's influencing him in the White House that we don't know that he's getting money from maybe it's not there maybe it is this is a guy who is fighting so hard to keep these from public purview you have to just wonder what is there I mean it's just the more he does it the more you sort of wonder like what's this about I want to go back to that point you made about the other IRS data that Suzanne quotes in The Times report which is the the IRS keeps comparative data especially at the high end of income earners I should say not income taxpayers because Donald Trump's not an income tax payer and Donald Trump is shown in this reporting at that time in those years to be one of the biggest losers in America well and so one of the things people should understand is so why wasn't Donald Trump audited so imagine for a moment you're an IRS auditor you're sent to do Trump's taxes he shows a loss of hundreds and millions of dollars you conclude half of it may be fraudulent he only lost half that much there's no revenue there so you close the case particularly if has happened in the case of one Auditor I've interviewed who was assigned Trump's taxes one year you have lawyers threatening you know the end of your career if you make trouble for him if there's no money to be had there the IRS just basically lets you go by and that's a fundamental problem in our tax law and it adds to the reasons that it is imperative that the House Ways and Means Committee and hopefully eventually the Senate Finance Committee do their duty of oversight and investigate how the IRS is handling the taxes of people like Donald Trump gentlemen before you comment let's listen let's refresh our memories about how Donald Trump presents himself to his voters what kind of businessman he is let's listen to this I'm really rich I'll show you that in a second I by the way I'm not even saying that in a bracket that's the kind of mindset that's the kind of thinking you need for this country what happens to that blind job imagine you'll keep saying I mean he is still rich let's remember that part is still richer than many people and it doesn't the truth is never stopped Donald Trump from from what ice claims might be so I imagine he'll keep saying that until the day he dies regardless of whether we ever see his taxes or not I will say that I think if you think about the three points you made at the beginning right one he's not at that rich tunas paper and made taxes and three was relying on his father right there revealing on each of them really only in different ways as David said the first reveals the main thing politically which is that he's a fraud and that the the presentation that was not the only reason he got elected president is certainly part of the traction he got with Republican nomination in a nomination contest was based not just on the aspiration think of him being a rich man that you should admire but also on the resentments that he stirred up that was a big part of it right but he's a fraud politically the second thing is related to how little he pays as David also suggests he may also be a crook so there's a legal element to that right and then there's the third element the element related the father which has a political and psychological component Hillary Clinton's people picked up on it very quickly you'll remember in that first debate in 2016 they knew that a sore toe for Donald Trump would be to raise his father and that he needed his father to get any kind of financial success and they hit him on it early in that debate it was the moment about half an hour into the first debate what he lost it because she had drilled into this psychological tender spot in him and I think for any Democrat who's think about running against Donald Trump in 2020 if you're thinking about a psychological profile in addition to a political and legal profile and how you run against him the relationship with the father and the psychological weakness that it exposes is one that you can hammer again and again in a much more devastating way than Clinton that right to do in 2016 is it your sense that people who are still Trump supporters yeah have kind of baked in all of this kind of things I think the ratio the ratio of aspiration to resentment now is much more resentment as the reason that people the culture of grievance that he feeds people that support him now are not supporting him because oh my god they think he's rich although I'm sure there are some people who still think that I think the rate the two things aspirational he's a billionaire he has his name on buildings was part of it that gave him entree and then driving the cultural resentments and grievances of the Republic a lot of Republicans was a large part of why he ultimately won the nomination why he won the presidency and why he continues to have the rock-solid base that he has I think this thing the legal and psychological implications are more important now than the political things stripping away of the notion that he's a rich man I'm not sure how many votes that takes away from him so David I imagine you're a soybean farmer out there and you've been losing money rather severely because of Donald Trump's illegal tariff regime that he has imposed on China China then retaliating agricultural incomes dropping in this country every day overall agriculture income dropping every day of the Trump presidency and those people are now gonna be reading at some point in time in the next week or so next few days this new account of Donald Trump of financial mastermind this new account of Donald Trump the great businessman who many of them voted for in the hope that their agricultural incomes would actually increase this might have some kind of resonance with them at this point well as foreclosure notices arrive and you look at the possibility of losing your farm that certainly should concentrate some minds about did we get snookered here by Donald Trump and I think you're gonna see that in other parts of the economy as well as people began to realize that things are not as we were promised but it's this is not going to happen overnight and I absolutely agree with John that too many Trump voters resentment is driving them much more now than the aspiration that you two could be like Donald Trump something I got to tell you sounds like it's always sounded like a nightmare to me because he's such a miserable human being Suzanne so a lot of us a lot of viewers and me are wondering how do you lose all that money like how do you lose it it's a lot of work whose money is it and how do you end up still flying around in your private plane and you report in your piece mr. Trump was able to lose all that money without facing the usual consequences such as a steep drop in his tan living in part because most of it belonged to others to the banks and bond investors who had supplied the cash to fuel his acquisitions so he's basically losing borrowed money the man a lot of it was board money and the interesting part of it is the board money flows on the losses on to his tax return and then because of the IRS code and the way it works he is able to turn those losses into essentially a gift card from the IRS to shelter taxable income going forward so he didn't have to be taxes on all the losses you know he was able to shelter his income going forward for the amount of losses he had it's an incredible thing so I'd say a lot of it was Bank money some of it was his but a lot of it was Bank money and one of the things David suggested is that it is possible this being Donald Trump that he exaggerated his losses that he declared more losses than he actually had to the IRS so that he could continue to pay no income to what was Bank losses I hope that's that yeah I think when you look at this period when I think about it the incredible thing is like we and I've been like fallenness like day in and day out you would think that the one decade he would have done well in was this one he wrote the art of the deal in 1987 it was his like things saying I'm the like the master of the universe he lost money that year like it's incredible when you look at that and you think this is the decade you would have thought he would have done the best in and he lost money every year he lost not only money he lost millions of dollars every year here's the thing we know about really rich people is that really rich people think that you're a sucker if you're losing your own money you know and the one thing you could say about Trump is that he's not a sucker he plays other people for suckers and that's been one of the secrets of success whether it's the lenders and the other people he's now convinced that he is a thing he's not but you know Todd rob has a lot of defects but he's not one of the suckers that's born every minute and David one of the things I've always marveled at at Trump is he lived through a period and he had money in a period where money could make enormous amounts of money he could have been a relatively early investor for example in IBM in the 1960s even with his and her money he could have been an early investor in Apple he could have been an early investor in Microsoft he could have Andy Warhol art he lived in Manhattan when when cheap art was falling off the walls that's turned into multi-million dollar art he has none of that he had no eye whatsoever for what was valuable in the world well he could have been the biggest real estate developer in New York something he keeps claiming instead of a distant also-ran if he actually understood how to get ahead in the real estate business in New York the the the news media bears some burden here for buying his absolute nonsense and treating it as reality and we should not lose sight of that and it is important now that we make sure that facts get checked against claims by Trump and one of things that's about to happen is Trump's going to claim soon the IRS leaked this data I'd be very surprised if Suzanne and Ross got this from the IRS Trump probably requested his transcript lots of tax payers do he might have had to show it to bankers to live against casino control commissioners or someone he had an agreement with like a prenuptial agreement so I would be absolutely floored if it was leaked out of the IRS where if you just keystroke in to look at say your tax return Lawrence an alarm goes off and a security person shows up saying what are you doing looking at Lawrence O'Donnell's tax return yeah David that's what I've been wondering about all night because I know all that about how it works inside the IRS what I was not aware of was that this IRS data is something that you can obtain and and and is used outside of the IRS yes and so I think there are a number of people who have portions of Trump's tax returns and other financial data and I think some of that's going to begin to slip out and I'm sure that Suzanne and Russ have more bullets that they're going to be firing in the future it makes me wish I was not our pensioner but still at the New York Times uh Suzanne you make the point on your sourcing that your source legally possesses these documents it was in possession of the documents and David's just given us a sense of how broad that can be I began the night John believing this stuff only exists inside the IRS but this is why I dedicate Justin's here I think you can I think in a lot of cases when you apply for mortgages you often give you for the bank's when you're applying for financing for just a standard mortgage you get a tax transcript and so there are a variety of people like I mean I think many many millions of Americans at some point in their life have applied for a tax transcript or given permission to someone to look at a tax transcript and so there's all you know given the number of transactions that job Trump's been involved in it wouldn't be surprising to me that there aren't dozens upon dozens of people who have legal who legally possess whether it's legal for them to turn them over other people is a different question but it illegally possess those transcripts that I think there must be many Suzanne you you were in touch with the White House getting trying to get comment from the President or his people as you were doing this work and as I read their response there was no specific response to anything that you specifically report in here no there wasn't the big question that these transcripts may not be accurate but the interesting thing is we are in a where because we've done work on the Trump family we have several years of Fred Trump's tax returns that we have not published we've published pieces of them this was on obvious reporting that's not reporting on an investigation we did a Nadal Trump's wealth in 2018 that we got ahold of several years of Fred Trump's tax returns we asked the source to provide us with the transcript for Fred Trump's tax returns matched up line by line dollar by dollar it's pretty pop pretty persuasive Suzanne if you like to see what you're reporting a story like this thanks for checking out our YouTube channel subscribe by clicking on the button below for more from the last word and the rest of MSNBC

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Keywords: MSNBC, news channel, news station, newspaper, breaking news, us news, world news, politics, current events, top stories, pop culture, business, liberal, progressive, cable, cable news, Last Word, The Last Word, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC News, MSNBC Live, Progressive News, Liberal News, lawrence odonnell, lawrence odonnell live, president donald trump speech, president donald trump speech today, donald trump speech, donald trump interview

Id: 6t-DbezjINA

Length: 23min 32sec (1412 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2019