Trump has pinned himself politically on his tax returns

Over the weekend, The New York Times published a sweeping investigation into many years of President Trump's tax returns, which they obtained from an anonymous source. It turns out Trump has paid no federal income tax for 10 of the last 15 years, and in 2016 and 2017 he paid just $750.

This bombshell reporting poses two serious political problems for Trump. First, he has (as usual) claimed that the reporting is "fake news." He could prove that by releasing his actual returns, but he has resisted doing so for years, probably because he doesn't want people to see them. So either he lets people pick over his returns publicly, or he validates the Times reporting (which has certainly been heavily fact-checked) by acting guilty. A literal billionaire paying less in federal income tax than a single childless adult making $18,000 is bound to be unpopular.

That leads into the second problem — with Trump's image. He has always portrayed himself as an ultra-successful businessman. In reality, for the last 20 years, Trump's main money-making ventures have been pretending to be a successful businessman on The Apprentice, together with branding and endorsement deals. At the same time, he zeroed out his tax liability by losing staggering sums on other businesses he owns. Just on golf courses alone he has lost over $315 million since 2000.

Trump's 2016 campaign relied very heavily on his supposed business acumen. "I'm going to be greedy for the United States," he said in a speech that year. Fewer people would have voted for him if they knew that his most remarkable characteristic was losing truly eye-popping amounts of money — more than any other taxpayer in several prior years. But now, it seems that is an undeniable fact. If Trump returns to private life, perhaps his next TV gig can have a different title.