What A Day - The Art Of The Steal

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

The New York Times published a bombshell report on two decades of Trump’s taxes, showing he paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and in 2017. Trump received massive refunds after reporting losses on his businesses, one of which is currently being reviewed by the IRS, and could cost him $100 million if it’s found to be illegitimate. On Saturday, Trump formally announced Judge Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee for the Supreme Court. We discuss her past positions on abortion, gun rights, and more to see how she might rule.And in headlines: Armenia and Azerbaijan declare martial law, Sri Lanka sends hazardous waste back to the UK, and astronauts prepare to vote from space.Show Links:"Trumps Taxes Show Chronic Losses And Years Of Tax Avoidance"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html

It's Monday, September 28th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What A Day, where we are congratulating everyone but the Lakers in heat for making it out of the NBA bubble. Yeah, we're happy to welcome you guys back to the outside world, and we're thankful to the bubble for risking it all to give us the gift of basketball. The NBA bubble is forever. Never pops. On today's show, what to know about Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Trump's pick for the Supreme Court, and some headlines. But first, the latest.

Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men? It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again. When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums, there is a life about to start when tomorrow comes. Okay, so that was the whole damn ensemble from the 2012 cast of the feature-length film based on the long-running Broadway play based on an even older novel by Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, singing Do You Hear the People Sing? And if you didn't know, the book was about the wealth disparities between the bourgeois class in France and the lower class that stoked the flames of the French Revolution. So yes,

obviously, we're going to start with that bombshell report from the New York Times on two decades of Trump's taxes that they got a hold of. There was a ton of information to parse through, and the Times is promising more info to be released in the coming weeks. But what do we know so far? All right. Honestly, we know so much. I have been reeling all day. So let's just hop in. The biggest takeaway and what you've likely seen people talking about is the amount of money Donald Trump paid in federal income tax. The 2016 election brought the topic to the forefront and Trump sat on his tax docs long enough to get but her emails bounced into the Oval Office. Well, now we know that in

2016 and 2017, according to these tax documents, Trump paid only $750 in taxes per year on his income. $750 is, as you know, the price of approximately half a college textbook these days. And in total, it's also only $300 more than the one-time $1,200 stimulus check that the government gave to Americans in the pandemic. Yeah, $750 could get you a PlayStation 5 and you'd have just a bit left over for a few games with that. Exactly. And if you think that's bad, the report also reveals that Donald Trump paid $0 in federal income tax in 10 of the previous 15 years. So that means that if you paid a single dollar those 10 years, you paid more than the current president of the United States. And if you're anything like me, you're wondering how the fuck can you do something like that? Well, he simply claimed hundreds of millions of dollars of losses on his businesses and wrote off everything from his makeup to his hairstylist to criminal defense lawyers.

And he paid family members as consultants. Yes, talking about Ivanka as if they were legitimate employees. So too long didn't read. He's evading taxes. And this isn't normal tax dodging. Most people in his tax bracket pay around 24% in taxes. And I'm not a mathematician, but I'm pretty sure zero dollars

isn't a percentage point at all. Joe and Jill Biden aren't billionaires, but in 2017, they jointly paid over $3.7 million in taxes. So I think it speaks for itself. But to be clear, part of the grift goes like this. You claim you lost a ton of money and you get a tax credit or refund for that. And then you use that to bankroll your taxes for that year and for years to come. Gideon, were you excited when you got

your tax refund last year? Because I bet you weren't as excited as Donald Trump. I was not. I need to get the people that he has working on his to start working on mine. But these refunds are a major focus now. And it's also unclear whether they were legally obtained, especially one enormous $72.9 million refund that's currently being reviewed by the IRS. What's the latest there? So this is that good, good corruption. All right. So the president is currently being audited, and if auditors ultimately disallow Trump's $72.9 million federal refund, he's going to be forced to return that money with interest and possibly penalties for a total that absolutely

could exceed $100 million. The documents also claim Trump is personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $421 million, with most of it coming due within four years. So if he wins the election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of deciding to foreclose on a sitting president. That also raises conflict of interest issues for him, as I'm sure you can imagine. Honestly, foreclose away. Yeah. But he's also been making moves to protect himself from the fallout right in front of our eyes. So Trump has been limiting the IRS's power, cutting their budget, and stacking courts with judges who are going to protect him for years. These numbers seem hard to fathom, but I think even more than that, they undermine everything Trump says in public about how much money he's making,

and what a great businessman he is, and literally the one area he's ever been lauded for simply being competent. This man has repeatedly said he wanted to run this country like a business, but based on the economic downturn in the country, it seems like he's running it exactly like he's running it exactly like he runs his own shitty businesses. But what really pisses me off is that it's looting. This is looting. This is someone gaming a system,

stiffing contractors, opening his mouth to speak about hard work at all when his contribution to society is a smaller percentage than all of ours. The report literally says that some years, Trump lost more money than nearly any other taxpayer in America. They should have called the apprentice the biggest loser. So I would just say, no,

don't entertain any conversation about someone throwing a brick through a target to get a TV ever again. I mean, how many communities could be helped by $72 million that Trump got for being fully inept? Yeah, it's a good point. And so let's talk about how this fits in with what we already know. There's been a sense that Trump was dishonest about his tax returns since 2016, but now we have more concrete proof. Yeah, I mean, it's the most detailed look that we've ever had, and it's also the most recent. So these returns go up to 2017, which means we know one reason why Trump didn't take a salary while he was in the White House. It's not because he's some benevolent rich man,

it's that he might have to pay more than $750 in taxes if he did. But in the past, all we had were fragments. There were two pages from his 2005 returns, three pages from 1995, and a single form from both 1994 and 1985. So this trove of tax stocks are all the stuff that they decided probably wouldn't be good to release, including how much money he's been making off of his properties while in office and the exorbitant amount that he owes right here in a Sunday push notification. And so how has Trump responded? What's actually next for all of this? So Trump predictably called the report fake news. Trump's lawyers tried to deny what's in the documents, but the New York Times goes point by point to refute their arguments.

So I would absolutely recommend reading into it over there. But if our show was longer, we would absolutely get into it. In terms of what comes next, it seems the IRS has to finish their audit. The New York Times has promised ongoing reporting on this for the coming weeks before the election. And oh, hey, all of this is looming over Tuesday's debate and this ragtag attempt to confirm a Supreme Court justice, which is coincidentally our next story. I love the United States and I love the United States Constitution. I am truly humbled by the prospect of serving on the Supreme Court. On Saturday, President Trump formally announced that Judge Amy Coney Barrett is his nominee for the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing. Barrett, as we talked about on an episode last week with law professor

Leah Littman, is staunchly conservative and if confirmed will create a six to three conservative majority on the court. She's also 48 years old, so if confirmed, she could have a really long tenure. So let's start with what we know about where she stands on issues that could come before the court. Right. So on the bio front, just quickly, Barrett is a former Notre Dame law professor and has been a judge on a federal appeals court based in Chicago since 2017. And early on in her career, she served as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. So that starts to give you a sense of her legal views. In her last three years as a judge, she's considered a number of cases that give more insight into how she views big issues

like abortion, gun rights, and more. We also have her legal writings as a professor plus previous Senate testimony. And so we know that Trump has said he wanted to appoint justices who would overrule Roe v. Wade. She's been on this list for quite some time, and anti-abortion groups

have been very supportive of Barrett. During her confirmation hearings for the appeals court, Barrett said that Roe is settled precedent, but the thinking from conservatives is that if a new case comes before the Supreme Court that directly challenges it, she wouldn't hesitate to overrule it or weaken it. Yeah, which means it's not settled precedent. But she's seen a few abortion cases so far dealing with restrictive laws in Indiana. So let's talk about those cases and how she's ruled previously. Yeah, so in one, there was a law being considered that would make it harder for minors to have an abortion without parents being notified. There was a ruling that blocked

that law, but subsequently Barrett joined an opinion saying that ruling was premature. In another case, Barrett was part of a 2018 dissent against two other Indiana laws that the court blocked. One law banned abortions that were sought because of the sex or disability of a fetus, and the other law had to do with requiring that abortion providers bury or cremate fetal remains. In 2016, Barrett said that it wasn't likely that SCOTUS would overturn Roe, but rather that they would assess how states restrict and regulate it. Yeah, so let's talk about where the rest of the country stands on the issue of abortion. Polling shows that trying to regulate what women choose to do with their own bodies is deeply unpopular among most voters. That's exactly right. Yeah. So for instance, in the most recent National New York Times Sienna poll, not only were many voters

unhappy with a Supreme Court confirmation happening this close to an election, but also tons were against doing anything to Roe. According to the poll, 71% of respondents who identified as independent said, quote, abortion should be legal all or most of the time, with 31% of Republicans saying the same thing. And a full 65% of independents said they would be less likely to vote for Trump should his SCOTUS nominee overturn Roe. Then there was a separate Politico Morning Consult poll over the weekend that found that by a two to one margin, respondents wanted Roe to be upheld. So this is pretty easy to deduce that beyond the key constituencies that are already voting for Biden or Trump, there are a lot of people who would not be in favor of a conservative majority court taking action here. Yeah. Another big issue

that is definitely coming to the court is the Affordable Care Act. We know that literally a week after Election Day, the Supreme Court is going to hear arguments on the most recent challenge to the ACA. So what do we know about Barrett's leanings on that? Well, in a 2017 law review article, which Barrett wrote before joining the appeals court, she was critical of Chief Justice John Roberts in the 2012 ACA case, in which SCOTUS upheld the individual mandate saying that he had, quote, pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute. So this new case that the Supreme Court is going to hear is being brought by Republican-led states, and it essentially seeks to invalidate all of the ACA because of a change that was made to the individual mandate by the GOP tax bill in 2017.

So that bill set the mandate's tax penalty to zero, which these states say makes the mandate not a tax, which they say makes it illegal. And they say if the mandate is illegal, then the rest of the law can't stand either. And that includes protections for people with pre-existing conditions or Medicaid expansion. So there are some legal scholars who say this case presents a different legal question than Barrett hasn't weighed in on specifically. Some have also said that the case is not a particularly strong legal challenge. But the position of Joe Biden and other Democrats is that ACA should be the focus as we get closer to the election, given even just the possibility that a conservative court could eliminate it. It's also worth noting that the Trump administration is not defending the ACA in court.

They have continually promised to put out an alternate plan for healthcare coverage in America, which has just yet to materialize. And we're talking about a possible gap in coverage for millions of people in the middle of a pandemic, with millions more potentially being considered to have pre-existing conditions in the future due to COVID-19 diagnoses. Yeah, there are a bunch of other issues to get into around Barrett that we'll look at in the coming days and weeks, like her stances on immigration and segregation. They are a doozy. But lastly for today, what do we know about how the confirmation is going to proceed from here? Well, Republicans are trying to do it at record speed. The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Lindsey Graham, wants to hold confirmation hearings

beginning on October 12th. And Republicans for now have scheduled an October 22nd vote for recommending the nomination to the full Senate. It's possible that Barrett could then be confirmed quite literally in the final week of October, just before Election Day. So much more to discuss about Barrett and all of this in the days and weeks that are to come but that is the latest for now it's Monday WOD Squad and and for today's Tim Check, we're talking about a casting update for another live-action Disney movie. Yara Shahidi of Grown-ish is going to play Tinkerbell in Peter Pan and Wendy,

which will start shooting soon. That news came out on Friday. Jude Law is going to play Captain Hook. Sexy. While 12-year-old Alex Maloney will play the titular Peter. So giddy. Live-action Disney movies have been an extremely mixed bag. What are your thoughts on this? My thoughts are okay. I don't watch these movies if I'm being purely honest. I think the last live action Disney I saw might

have been 101 Dalmatians. Wow. Deep cut. I am revealing myself. But this sounds fine to me. Jude Law always sort of a treat in weird roles. So I can get behind that, I think. We love it. Also, it's like, I feel like Captain Hook doesn't really, like he's kind of got an English accent. Like the only one who doesn't is kind of Peter Pan. So I feel like he's pretty much,

like he's better off than he would have been as young Pope, which was just a disaster. Yes, yes. Agreed. Young Pope in the Peter Pan storyline would be hilarious, though. But same question for you, Akilah. How are you feeling about this version of Peter Pan? I mean, I'm super hype.

Like, I'm going to dress as Yara Shahidi for Halloween. Well, I guess I'll be Tinkerbell, but as Yara Shahidi. So whatever. I feel like in the metamorphosis of like black girls with cheekbones, it goes like Yara Shahidi, me and then Kerry Washington. And so I feel like I wouldn't be doing my due diligence if I wasn't being that middle Pokemon and, you know, shouting out the younger one by being Tinkerbell. So I'm hype about it. But yeah, overall, I think live action Disney movies. I don't see the point, but anything to upset the racists. So we're down.

Yeah. I mean, that seems like a net plus. And I love this for you. And, you know, Pokemon evolution overall, I think it's good. Thank you so much. Well, just like that, we have checked our temps. Stay safe. I hope that Jude Law is sexy for you as well. And we will be back with another tip check tomorrow. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. fights in a disputed border region. The two countries have fought over the Nagorno-Karabakh region since the end of the Soviet Union. The territory is officially a part of Azerbaijan, but it's home to an enclave of Armenian separatists. Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to a ceasefire in 1994, but that didn't completely resolve the tensions. The countries have both reported deaths during this weekend's military engagements, with each side accusing the other

of initiating the violence. On Sunday, Armenian officials mobilized the country's entire male population to prepare for the conflict. The U.S. and Russia have called for an immediate ceasefire in the region, while Turkey said it would support Azerbaijan. Housing activists in Philadelphia reached an agreement with the city to allow people experiencing homelessness to live in empty houses owned by the city. Philadelphia Housing Action announced on Saturday that the city will be transferring 50 vacant houses into a community land trust they created. The land trust will help people who might not be able to access housing options because of criminal records or eviction histories. On top of that, the agreement with the city permanently designates the houses as extremely low-income housing and will allow 50 mothers and children who are currently living in

them to remain in place. Activists say this is a huge step in the right direction and that more steps must be taken to anticipate a wave of mass evictions due to COVID-19. That's right. We've all gotten stuff we didn't order in the mail. Sometimes it's the AARP magazine of the kind old man who used to live in our apartment. Other times it's 263 storage containers filled with hazardous waste that were shipped from the United Kingdom. So the latter was received by the country of Sri Lanka between 2017 and 2018. It's part of a global trend of rich countries exporting waste to developing countries to be recycled, though the waste is frequently burned or buried. This weekend, Sri Lanka sent 21 of those containers back to the UK.

The country said the waste was shipped in violation of international laws regulating the shipment of hazardous material. Malaysian officials pursued a similar course of action back in January, sending back 42 containers of illegally imported plastic waste to the UK. Side note, if you want to find a way to still travel this year, one good option is to be trashed that is under international dispute. Honestly, they are getting around. Well, this year, space is the ultimate battleground state. At least one astronaut will be voting from the International Space Station, NASA's Dr. Kate Rubins. Most astronauts live in Texas, so that state passed a law in 1997 that allows residents to participate in elections when they are floating in the cosmos. Rather than sending her ballot through the mail or in a tiny rocket ship that explodes through the Earth's atmosphere and is caught by a special athletic poll worker, Rubins will vote using a secure electronic ballot that's forwarded through

mission control. Astronaut voters list their address as low Earth orbit, which is a real flex. Also same. I feel like I'm in low Earth orbit. I'm ready to engage in a second space race with Russia to see which of our countries can put a huge sticker on the ISS that says I voted. We are going to freaking win. And those are the headlines. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, pay your taxes, or honestly, don't anymore.

There are no more rules and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just space ballots like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And you'll be out of the bubble soon, Lakers in heat. You're almost there.

Coming back home. Good for you guys. What A Day is a Crooked Media production. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kshaka.