This is a great point, and it hits Trump where he lives — but, in typical Hillary fashion, she fails to press the point effectively. The real fun starts at 1:47:
CLINTON: 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’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had 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.
Nothing hurts Trump like suggesting he’s not rich. She should have pressed that point much harder. She could have pointed to Mark Cuban in the front row, and reminded the crowd that Cuban said not all that long ago that Trump really isn’t that rich:
If @realDonaldTrump were fractionally as rich as he says he is,he would write a$200mm check to propel his campaign. He doesn't have the cash
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) June 21, 2016
If she really wanted to see Trump lose it, she should have harped on that point.
But instead, she dumped on Trump for not paying a lot in taxes, which allowed him to wriggle off the hook by aligning himself with the vast majority of Americans who, like Trump, hate paying their hard-earned money to the federal government.
A promising line of attack ruined by poor delivery. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Hillary Clinton campaign in a nutshell.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member