This week’s Mainstream Media Scream features Sunday show regular George Stephanopoulos sounding obsessed with how Donald Trump’s new tax plan will impact, if not help, rich folks like the GOP presidential front-runner. “You’re not going to be paying more taxes,” the former Clinton aide told Trump.
The video has been shortened from this back and forth on This Week:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You made about $250 million in the last year.
DONALD TRUMP: $605 million.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay, 605. The top rate goes from 40 percent to about 25 percent. Capital gains comes down from 23 to 20. That’s a huge — that’s tens of millions of savings for you.
TRUMP: Everybody’s going to save according to my plan.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You’re not going to be paying more taxes.
TRUMP: George, that money is going back into other things.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you’re going to get a tax cut?
TRUMP: I don’t know, because I have very big deductions. Frankly, some of them are ridiculous. You’re entitled to deductions. So I don’t know that I am.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But not $600 million worth.
TRUMP: I think probably I’ll end up paying more under this to be honest. I don’t think im going to. If you look at all of the kinds of deductions that people are allowed to take that you’re not going to be taking anymore, including carried interest, that’s just one of them, I think I probably don’t do as well.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But where your family would make potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, eliminating the estate tax?
TRUMP: Well, the estate tax is a different thing. The estate tax is a very, very horrible weapon that has destroyed many families, in particular farms and things where they make an income and they have a certain value and they have to go out and borrow money and then they put mortgages on their farms.
STEPHANOPOULOS: It’s twenty farms in the last year.
TRUMP: George, if you have a business, and let’s say it’s a business that’s not very liquid, and people have to go out and borrow against the business, you’re having travesty. And the other thing is, it’s a double-taxation. The tax has already been paid. I mean, you been hearing this argument for many years.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you’re family would benefit but you’re saying it’s just wrong?
TRUMP: No, no, I say it’s a double-taxation. The death tax is an unfair tax because the tax has already been paid.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Bottom line, you do accept that you’re going to make out well under your tax plan?
TRUMP: I don’t know. I mean, if the economy is good, if the economy is great, everybody makes out well.
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our pick: “Silly priorities from Stephanopoulos, more interested in making petty liberal political points about Trump’s personal situation than exploring whether Trump’s tax plan would boost an economy sagging through seven years of Obamanomics.”
Rating: Three out of five screams.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
