Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of President Donald Trump and executive vice president of Trump Organization, on Monday morning accused the New York Times of deliberately releasing its bombshell report on the President’s tax avoidance to help Democratic candidate Joe Biden ahead of the presidential debate on Tuesday.
During an interview on “Fox and Friends,” Trump Jr. attacked the report, which revealed the astonishingly meager federal income taxes his father had paid from 2000 to 2017, in some years paying no taxes at all, and how the President used his many business failures to rake in massive tax refunds. The Times also detailed how one of the business expenses Trump Organization reported as a tax write off were legal fees for the criminal defense lawyer who represented Trump during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
“Of course the New York Times does this,” Trump Jr. complained on Monday.
“They put out a selective picture of all of these things the day before the debates to try to give someone like Joe Biden an attack line,” he added, seemingly mixing up the dates (the Times published the report on Sunday, the debate is on Tuesday). “They come up with one or two catchy soundbites, and that’s the game.”
Trump dismissed his father’s tax dodges and questionable tax write offs as standard business practice.
“People don’t understand what goes into a business,” the President’s son said.
Don Jr. accuses NYT of publishing its report on Trump's tax returns to give Biden an "attack line" before the presidential debate tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/GrcBRYOFel
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 28, 2020
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany launched a similar attack during an appearing on “Fox and Friends,” calling the report a “hit piece.”
“This is the same playbook they tried in 2016, the same playbook that the American people rejected and will do so again,” McEnany said, referring to the Times’ report on Trump’s 1995 tax returns in which he declared a loss of a whopping $916 million.
McEnany dismisses NYT Trump tax return report as a conspiracy against POTUS. pic.twitter.com/NoAgK5nkbe
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 28, 2020
