Background Briefing: September 29, 2020

On By gram

 

Trump’s MO of Lying, Cheating and Stealing to Tie up IRS Auditors for Years Until They Give up and Cry Uncle

We begin with continuing fallout from the explosive revelations in The New York Times from two decades of Trump’s taxes which he has fought so hard to keep secret and speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter David Cay Johnston, whose reporting has uncovered loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code and he has uncovered so many tax dodges that he has been called the “de facto tax enforcement officer of the United States.” The co-founder of DC Report.org where he has an article “The Times Pulls Back The Covers On The Unrepentant Tax Cheat“, we discuss how Trump learned from his mentor Roy Cohn to “lie, cheat, steal and never ever apologize or concede any fact. Just tie the authorities up for years and make them pour their limited resources into a case so they will give up and cry uncle.” This appears to be the case with the fraudulently-claimed $72.9 million refund that Trump got from the IRS in 2010 which is still under audit and starting in that same year with the Tea Party wave election, the Congress has since cut IRS enforcement by 25% making it easy for rich tax cheats to prosper.

 

Congress’s Gutting of the IRS’s Revenue Collection Capabilities

Then we examine further the gutting of the IRS’s revenue collection with its auditors cut from 14,000 in 2010 to under 9,000 in 2018 and from 8 out of 100 millionaires audited in 2010 to less than 3 out of every 100 millionaires in 2018. Leslie Samuels, an internationally recognized tax lawyer who served as Assistant Secretary of Tax Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department joins us to discuss how there is too much focus on taxes and not enough focus on revenues with the U.S. on track to lose $7.5 trillion in unpaid taxes over the next decade.

 

Ahead of Tonight’s Debate, Will Biden Get Tough While Staying Presidential?

Then finally, just ahead of the first presidential debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, we speak with an expert on political discourse and presidential rhetoric, Jennifer Mercieca, a professor in the Department of Communications at Texas A&M University whose latest book is Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump. She joins us to discuss how Biden will be presidential and could get under Trump’s skin by being a lot tougher tonight rather than saying to Trump “man that’s a bunch of malarkey.”