Sorry for my pony, probably, but 1.1 Billion? Damn, son! (Thread)
https://mobile.twitter.com/DanAlexander21/status/1310342791336284160
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The American tax code is ridiculously huge. It has over 3.4 million words and is about 7500 pages long in a Word document. I honestly don’t understand much about the tax code.
Props to the Czech government for keeping taxes simple.
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Even if I was ponied, he’s back now (14 hours later); after having covered Trump’s debt, he’s now looking at Trump’s assets. I think his takeaway (somehow?) is that Trump is still a billionaire.
This is the Forbes “Trump Reporter” apparently, fwiw.
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These are good points. I think we probably agree more than we disagree. I just think that that sliver of persuadable 2016 Trump voters must be persuaded with emotional narratives. Their vote for Trump in 2016 tells us that is the case. I just don’t buy that people making an emotional vote for outsider Trump in 2016 are now ready to join Team Reason. If anything people will be voting more emotionally in 2020. I do tend to agree with you that we shouldn’t sink to Trump’s level, but we also don’t need to do that. There are valid emotional appeals for prospective voters that are supported by facts - people should be scared of losing health care under Trump, they should be scared of losing their jobs and homes, they should be scared that they will die from a pandemic, all because Trump is demonstrably incompetent and cruel. Biden needs to lean into those genuine fears and he doesn’t have to lie to do it. But he also needs to keep it simple and direct.
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Agree entirely on the last part. I mentioned earlier in this thread that Biden should all but ignore the story if it comes up or if he is asked about it. Use it only to pivot to healthcare, COVID, etc.
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Yeah I like combining the two. He hid his taxes and now we know why: he’s defrauding the American taxpayers. He’s a billionaire paying $750 while teachers and firefighters and nurses pay ______. He’s ripping all of us off. This guy thinks you’re all suckers for paying taxes while he rips you off and laughs all the way to the bank. Now he wants more tax cuts for the rich because I guess $750 is too much. So he wants more tax cuts for himself while you get your healthcare taken away, while Social Security is blown up, while Medicare is run into the ground.
Donald Trump is not on your side. He’s a self-dealing billionaire who thinks you’re a sucker when you vote for him. He’s ripping you off.
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How is this different than calling John McCain a loser, or attacking a gold star family, or grabbing women, or saying Megyn was bleeding out of her whatever, or any one a a hundred other norm-violating incidents? Trump voters don’t care about this sort of stuff and thinking any of this is going to land is misunderstanding Trump’s support. Of course trump didn’t pay his taxes. Who the hell thought he did? Certainly not his supporters, any more than they thought he was a faithful husband. They don’t give a shit.
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Yeah, for sure. There is probably a way to play the Orange Man Bad stuff so its bit of red meat for Bidens core supporters but also transitions very quickly to appeals directly to voters. The line “are you better off than you were 4 years ago” is a cliché when running against an incumbent but I think it will have a lost of traction in 2020. The country is literally on fire and the economy is on life support and grandparents are dying from a pandemic and the streets are overrun with violence.
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He doesn’t pay his taxes, they pay theirs. He thinks they’re suckers for it and laughs at them. He’s ripping them off.
Repeat over and over and over. He’s a con artist and they’re the ones falling for it.
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I don’t understand your post, you seem to be arguing against a position that I don’t have.
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I was more expanding on your post than arguing with it
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Lol, got it. I’m so used to people arguing with me you threw me for a loop.
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This seems familiar.
If Trump loses this time, something will have changed. Maybe it’s none of the things SK listed, or maybe it’s all of them in some uncrackable combination, but claiming that nothing can dissuade Trump voters is silly. It basically means that you’re guaranteeing his vote total will stay the same or go up.
Anyway, like others have said, even if this doesn’t change many minds, it’s a couple more of the increasingly precious days that will need to be used up by people like SK handwaving away the importance of the revelations.
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It’s not that it’s difficult to understand, it’s that people aren’t exposed to the correct information. If you’re learning about taxes from Facebook, you’re going to believe some wild shit.
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The reason he’s losing the election so badly is that he’s unpopular because of his numerous crimes and scandals. The reason Clinton lost is that a disproportionate amount of media attention was diverted to her own (comparatively minor) scandals. Keeping the focus on an easily identifiable Trump scandal is an automatic win. It may or may not change anyone’s mind, but it’s sure as hell not going to convince anyone leaning Biden to vote Trump instead.
But in fact, “Trump owns a private jet, but he paid less in tax than 99.9% of American taxpayers” is a pretty good attack.
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Re: Messaging:
Don’t focus on the $750. Focus on the failed businesses and/or the grift. The goal is to destroy Trump’s image, drive him crazy, and make people defensive of their assets. Here’s the two messages I would go with:
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“Trump told us that he was a great businessman, but his business lost hundreds of billions of dollars. Trump told us that he would be a great president, but his leadership lost hundreds of thousands of lives. Trump says he’s a winner, but all he does is lose.”
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“As a businessman, Trump stole your tax dollars to fund his failed casinos. Now, he’s stealing your tax dollars to fund his failed presidency. Vote him out, and protect your savings.”
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So are attacks on his many policy and governing failures. Those are better imo
"This is not tax strategy. This is tax fraud. It brought down Al Capone. It’ll bring down Trump, too.
The man is legally forbidden from ever running a charity again because he used his last one to defraud war veterans out of millions of dollars to pay for stupid shit like self portraits.
He defrauded them. He defrauded you. And now by cheating on his taxes, he defrauded the American people. Let the courts decide if he should go to prison. Our job is to vote him out."
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I don’t think this is true at all. The Trump presidency and the pandemic have made it quite clear that the markets are not closely tied to either the political situation or the actual economy people experience. If anything, the markets thrive on the Littlefinger premise of chaos. The most rent and profit can be extracted when society has the least leverage and institutions are unable to function as intended.
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