RUSH: This Jean in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Hi.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?<\/p>\n
RUSH: Good, good, good. Thank you very much.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Good. I have some questions maybe you can help me with.<\/p>\n
RUSH: All right. Do my best.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/APP-102319-Trump-Taxes.jpg\")
CALLER: The president, every time he says something and they catch him at it, everybody lies, but him. He won\u2019t turn over his tax reports. I don\u2019t know why. He\u2019s forced to live in a dump like the White House, and everybody has to defend him three hours a day, five days a week. It\u2019s a little worrisome if he has to be defended that much.<\/p>\n
RUSH: So, did Bush have to be defended this much and —<\/p>\n
CALLER: I\u2019m not talking about Bush. I\u2019m talking about Trump.<\/p>\n
RUSH: No, I\u2019m talking about all Republicans. Trump is just the latest in a long line and the most exacerbating one, but I get what you\u2019re doing. You\u2019re telling me I have to defend Trump so much that he must be lying. Why does it take me three hours to defend Trump every day. Well, CNN\u2019s on 24 hours a day lying about him, so I only got three here to compete with them.<\/p>\n
CALLER: I don\u2019t watch CNN. I want you to answer me, what you think why.<\/p>\n
RUSH: What do I think — why — what is the actual question?<\/p>\n
CALLER: Why won\u2019t he turn his tax reports in? Why is everybody in the world lying, but him? Why does he have to be defended so vigorously?<\/p>\n
RUSH: Precisely because there are people like you that still don\u2019t get it. And you remain one of the reasons I do this show every day. And I don\u2019t mean this insultingly. His tax returns are nobody\u2019s business. You want his tax returns \u2019cause the media wants his tax returns \u2019cause they think there\u2019s gonna be something in there that proves he\u2019s in bed with Russia \u2019cause they can\u2019t prove it any other way because it isn\u2019t true! You are the exact reason I continue to do this. And maybe it ain\u2019t working, folks.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Trump\u2019s tax returns. You know, there\u2019s all kinds of people in the world. People that are in politics, people that have political aspirations, people that want to run for office and get elected, certain things they have to do. And the minute they decide in their lives that they want to do that, they have to start living a certain way. And they have to start setting up their affairs in a certain way. And one of those things is taxes.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s become an article of faith that people running for office will make a big reveal of their income tax returns every year to show that they\u2019re average people. They\u2019re no different than you. It\u2019s a way of making yourself look like you\u2019re not trying to hide anything. But people who do this, people who have political aspirations make necessary adjustments, so they start living their lives in certain ways to create tax returns that look a certain way that the public expects.<\/p>\n
They wear coats and ties all the time, they go to rubber chicken dinners. You know, there is a list of things your average, run-of-the-mill political candidate, political official has to do. Now, somebody who has grown up and has reached the age of 60 and has never even thought about running for political office will not have structured his tax returns, his tax affairs, any of his financial affairs in ways that will survive public scrutiny. But people who have a lifetime ambition of being in politics do.<\/p>\n
I contend to you that people who release their tax returns are people who know that they were gonna be doing it and have structured them accordingly. There are some people who will pay more than they owe. There are some people who will not take every deduction available to them. There are some people that will make sure that when their tax returns are released, that they\u2019re paying a tax rate that\u2019s about average, even if they could have done better.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/APP-102319-Trump-Press.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Well, somebody like Trump, who has never had political aspirations, is gonna structure his financial life entirely differently. He\u2019s gonna go for every deduction he can get that the law allows. He\u2019s gonna use tax lawyers to put together a return and a financial life that will be legal under the eyes of the IRS, but it is not designed for public consumption, and it\u2019s not designed to help him go further in his business. People in politics, this is an article of faith they have to do. So here comes Trump at age, what, 70, he decides to run for office. \u201cYou gotta release your tax returns. Everybody does.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not gonna release \u2019em. There\u2019s stuff in there you wouldn\u2019t understand. I didn\u2019t structure my \u2013\u201d I mean, he doesn\u2019t say this publicly, but this is why. The public has grown accustomed to seeing tax returns that are vanilla, uncomplicated, don\u2019t have thousands of pages of deductions and whatever else. He just doesn\u2019t want to give anybody any ammo.<\/p>\n
If Trump had been breaking the law with his taxes all these years, he would have been nabbed at it long ago, folks. He would have been found and tracked down. I\u2019m sure he\u2019s audited constantly. If there was something untoward or illegal, it would have been found by the time he\u2019s 70. So it\u2019s really outsider versus insider.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just another illustration here of what I think you could almost say is the phoniness of people in politics. I mean, how many you have — honestly, now — how many of you think about preparing your tax returns every year with the first objective being it better look good when people see them? How many of you never expect your tax return to ever be made public? I\u2019d venture to say most of you, because most of you don\u2019t think you\u2019re gonna be running for office, and most of you don\u2019t think anybody else is gonna care.<\/p>\n
But people running for office or wanting to be in politics, this is one of the first things they do, is live a life and prepare a financial structure that will survive public exposure. And there\u2019s any number of ways of doing this to make it pass muster with the American public. And depending if it\u2019s a Republican or Democrat, Obama could release a tax return that show him paying no taxes at all, the media would applaud him for brilliance.<\/p>\n
The media would applaud Obama for taking advantage of every tax loophole he had, great tax attorneys, look at Obama, and he owed this, he\u2019s deserving of this, he was a descendent of slaves, this country has mistreated African-Americans, if Obama paid no taxes, then that\u2019s great. That\u2019s how they would treat it. Or a variation of that. You think Trump would get that kind of benefit? You think Trump would ever get praised for being brilliant in the structuring of his financial life if there were questions about his tax returns? There\u2019s no way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RUSH: I contend to you that people who release their tax returns are people who know that they were gonna be doing it and have structured them accordingly. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":326270,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n