Hillary Clinton did not get off to a particularly strong start in tonight’s presidential debate as Donald Trump hit her with what, by his standards, were some fairly legitimate criticisms of her past support for trade deals. She found her footing more solidly in explaining exactly why Donald Trump might not want to release his tax returns:
The transcript:
CLINTON: I think you’ve just seen another example of bait and switch here. For 40 years, everyone running for president has released their tax returns. You can go and see nearly, I think 39, 40 years of our tax returns—but everyone has done it. We know the IRS has made clear there is no prohibition on releasing it when you’re under audit. So you’ve got to ask yourself, why won’t he release his tax returns? And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe he’s not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he’s not as charitable as he claims to be. Third, we don’t know all of his business dealings but we have been told, through investigative reporting, that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes because the only years that anybody has ever seen were a couple of years when had he to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.
TRUMP: That makes me smart.
CLINTON: He paid zero. That means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health. And I think probably he’s not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are, because it must be something really important, even terrible that he’s trying to hide. And the financial disclosure statement [that Trump suggested voters look at to in lieu of his returns], they don’t give you the tax rate. They don’t give you all the details that tax returns would and it just seems to me that this is something that the American people deserve to see. And I have no reason to believe that he’s ever going to release his tax returns because there’s something he’s hiding. And we’ll guess, we’ll keep guessing at what it is that he’s hiding, but I think the question is, will he ever, to get near the White Wouse, what would be those conflicts? Who does he owe money to? Well, he owes you the answers to that and he should provide them.
On this point, at least, she’s not wrong!
