The White House on Monday declined to comment on press reports that Donald Trump claimed a $916 million loss in 1995, and instead highlighted President Obama’s call to change the tax code to eliminate loopholes for the wealthy and make it “fairer.”
“You’ve heard the president on a number of occasions since his first year in office talk about the need to ensure that we have a tax code that is both consistent” with our national priorities, but “also a tax code that’s fair,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday.
Pressed to provide a reaction to Trump’s tax return, Earnest said it’s “difficult for anybody to draw a firm conclusion without having an opportunity to take a look at all of the data.”
“What I will say is Mr. Trump’s tax strategies aside, the president believes that we can do some very helpful things for the economy by closing loopholes that only benefit the wealthy and well-connected and using the revenue from those closed loopholes to invest in things like infrastructure and invest[ing] in community college for every hardworking American student,” Earnest said.
“These are the kinds of things that we know would be good for our economy — both in the short term and will lay a strong foundation for our long-term economic growth,” he added.
The New York Times published three pages of Trump’s 1995 tax returns Saturday night, which showed that Trump reported a $916 million loss that year.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign pounced on the report with an ad using the information to charge that Donald Trump is a business failure who has “gotten rich at your expense.”
