Trump wants to get rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax.
The White House’s ire notwithstanding, the 2005 return isn’t really a bombshell. The two pages show tax information one would expect for someone with Trump’s wealth and businesses. He paid roughly $5.3 million under regular federal income tax guidelines—a pittance for someone with his reported fortune—but also paid $31 million in what’s known as the “alternative minimum tax,” bringing his federal payment that year to about 25 percent of his income. Trump’s tax plan released during his campaign vowed to eliminate “the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) while providing the lowest tax rate since before World War II.” One thing the return does reveal is that, at least in 2005, that change might have lowered Trump’s effective tax rate from 25 percent to just 4 percent.
This. This is the next version of the imaginary attack story. To distract us from the CBO report, he leaks his 2005 1040—with no supporting documents or forms—to Johnston, and waits for a reaction. Maddow tweets that she’s got the forms, and the Trump camp responds instantly, releasing exactly the same information. They knew it was coming because they’d sent it.
They’re trying to distract us from the CBO’s report on the AHCA bill, that millions of people would lose their insurance if Trumpcare is passed.
I’m supposing I would tune into a show about someone’s tax returns not to hear what was in them, but to hear the analysis of what it means. Did they preempt the analysis?
I think you’re right about trying to pit the Have Nots against the Haves…unfortunately, we’ve seen in this election cycle the Have Nots are actually rooting for this asshole because he is a “successful businessman”.
Trump drew basically the same GOP base as usual: overwhelmingly white, mostly higher than median income. There was a substantial change in the working class vote, but it wasn’t a shift in support to Trump.
A lot of lower-income Obama voters just didn’t vote this time. Partly due to escalating voter suppression, partly due to the working class refusing to continue endorsing their own increasing pauperisation.
The meme of “Trump was elected by stupid poor people” is comforting to wealthy white Democrats, but it just isn’t true. Middle- and upper-class America did this.
Thank you for pointing this out. I am getting sick of this false assertion that it was the white poor that elected Trump. That’s a myth he is trying to perpetuate, that he is a populist. He appeals to wealthy people who feel protective of lower class whites.
There was an interesting fact in this episode of You Are Not So Smart that the more educated people are, the more likely they are to dig in behind a belief once a lot of facts come out against that belief. So, I think it’s going to take a real mountain of credible information before his true believers turn against him.
That does ignore that Trump gained 6-7 points with the less than $50K crowd and lost 2-3 points with every category over $50K, but you are right that more people with incomes >$50K voted. It’s probably a wash for most places, but in MI & WI (but not PA) the $30-50K crowd went hard for Trump - making up 20-22% of the voters (typical of the demographic) and going 55-60% in favor of Trump. PA was much more sharply divided on racial lines than anything else. Trump also brought in a lot of the some college or less crowd versus other elections.
I’m not saying you are wrong (after all with only 55% of the population voting who the fuck knows what is hidden from the data), I’m just saying where it counted most, the working class - especially the white male Christian aspects of the working class - flocked to Trump like they have historically. It’s literally the same group controlling the electoral college as it was in the Reagan era. They really like their populists I guess.
I think it’s mostly comforting to people who do not want to acknowledge the roll that racism played in driving voters to Trump.
And I think that’s a rather large part of the hole in the forgotten working class left behind fueled Trump claim. Union workers mostly did not back Trump. Working blacks, Hispanics, Asians and so forth did not back Trump. The very poorest Americans did not back Trump. Apparently people most effected by outsourcing and the collapse of manufacturing did not universally swing Trump. There was that study a few weeks ago showing that even in rural states and the rust belt. Trumps “surge” in support was more about those in less urbanised counties showing up when those in more urbanized (where most of the lost jobs and problems hes supposedly addressing are) did not. Those people in more densely populated and harder hit areas seem to have more consistently backed Hillary, or at least hated Trump. But they opted to stay home, meaning their support level is invisible in the actual vote data. By most definitions of the word “working class” most of the working class wasn’t particularly Trumped up.
But when we say “working class”. What we mean is white, christian folks, without college degrees. Working various “blue collar” jobs regardless of income level. In a handful of very specific places. A carpenter in NYC is not what we mean by working class. A black farmer is not what we mean by working class. An active auto workers union member is (weirdly) not really what we mean by working class. Though we refer to him often when we use the term.
That group we are referring to as working class? They seem to have been awful excited about all that talk about immigrants and Muslim’s causing all their problems. In fact when you boil it down that seems to be what most distinguishes the working class from all the nearby identical groups that aren’t working class and didn’t vote Trump.
But it’s not nice to call that out for what it is. So working class it is.
Which is why I said MI and WI, where turnout was high like it always was and middle class wages saw a huge shift to Trump compared to previous years. As a whole nation, the middle class rejected Trump. But as the fivethirtyeight analysis shows that @JonS linked (it is much more comprehensive than this); Trump won through resting comfortably knowing that he only needed to swing a couple states that were predominantly white and Christian, aggressively campaigning in just those swing states knowing the center of the country was deep red, and pushing for the same group that brought Reagan into office to bring him into office. So yes, the working class - as in those who are around the median income in the US - voted for Trump. But it was a geographically consistent group of white working class voters that did it.
What you can only guess at is what the ~30% of voters in key swing states would have done if they had to vote, and it would have likely meant Hillary won but even that is impossible to do more than estimate. Just like we know Comey’s letter had an effect and we know voter suppression has worked - but we can’t grasp the magnitude.
I watched it this morning, I realize that Johnston made sure to explicitly say it is quite possible for Trump to be the source. I brought it up because Trump has done it before, and it is a common PR strategy on fictional TV shows about PR spinning. Considering that Trump appears to do everything based on TV consumption, I found it interesting.
Maybe that’s the big secret - Trump is a product of a life lived in front of pop media and being obsessed with fame, and the people that like him like all the stuff he does like he is a character in pop media. Lord knows it makes as much sense as anything else.
EDIT
And if you want the people running with the “this proves that Trump is right about tax reforms” there are some bizarre comments from everybody’s favorite Carlson.
My concern is slightly off-topic in that I’m more interested in who has changed his mind about Trump. It’s true that middle and upper class America voted Republican. Not exactly news. But in light of his present approval ratings, (39% approve, 55% disapprove) I’m going to suggest that it’s the stupid poor people who CONTINUE to support him, while the others, not so much. This actually encourages me.
