Any dwindling belief that Donald Trump’s business career represented anything other than “The Art of the Scam” died Tuesday night when The New York Times reconstructed the president’s federal tax returns from 1985-1994. In a feat of forensic work worthy of a TV crime series, reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig revealed that Trump lost $1.17 billion in a decade and “appears to have lost more money than any other individual American taxpayer.”
Trump’s dazzling failure helps explain how he and the Republicans have given the nation an era of nearly $1 trillion in annual deficits, despite the
buoyant economy.
The Times’ scoop is bracing, even if it comes too late to convince Trump loyalists that they have been hoodwinked by a fraud (if they ever were convincible). What it does suggest is that no coverup lasts forever—and that, sooner or later, Trump’s more recent tax returns will be made public.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been stonewalling the House Ways and Means Committee’s demand, buttressed by a 1924 law, for the last six years of Trump’s federal returns. In a coincidence that might embarrass a political novelist, the Times’ story broke just as Mnuchin was attending a 2020 Trump fundraiser—the kind of event past treasure secretaries have avoided out of conflict-of-interest concerns.
But just as New York’s tabloid culture of the 1980s and 1990s made Trump, his residency in the state may ultimately break him. The New York legislature, which has its own hefty share of grifters, is moving toward approving a bill that would provide Trump’s state tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee on request.
Since the information on state and federal taxes is virtually identical, such legislation might help solve the tantalizing mystery of why and how Trump, who worshipped debt, began paying for expensive properties (including golf courses) with cash in 2006. It is worth noting that the Mueller report neither went back that far nor scrutinized Trump’s finances.
The Times bombshell story also revealed that in business—if, alas, not yet in politics—Trump the Braggart eventually became exposed as Trump the Blowhard.
One of Trump’s few profit-making ventures in the late 1980s was his version of the age-old Wall Street boiler-room scam known as “pump and dump.” Repeatedly, Trump would announce that he was seeking to acquire majority control of a major company like United Airlines and then, when the stock jumped, he’d sell his relatively small holdings at a major profit. Trump pulled off the same scheme with publicly touted investments in Hilton Hotels, Gillette, and Federated Department Stores.
But stock analysts, with money on the line, noticed that Trump never followed through after his initial braggadocio about a takeover attempt. In late 1989, a purported Trumpian raid on American Airlines inspired mostly yawns and giggles. According to the Times’ analysis, Trump appeared to have lost more than $30 million when American Airlines stock dropped sharply.
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