Trump’s fade into incoherence

[bkepley]

Jennifer Rubin
TWP

There is no secret why conscientious voters are abandoning Trump. Aside from obnoxious insults, his utterances reflect a bizarre policy brew of exaggeration, fallacy and liberal convictions. In two embarrassing interviews, NBC’s Chuck Todd and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos hounded him on taxes, the debt and Syria. Under pressure Trump conceded he, like other rich Americans, was going to save big on his tax plan, falsely marketed as a populist scheme. Other than insisting the impossible — 6 percent growth — he had no rejoinder to the independent study showing his plan adding to the debt by at least $10 trillion. On ABC it went like this:


STEPHANOPOULOS: More and more Americans will pay nothing at all. But the Conservative Tax Foundation says it will increase the deficit by about $10 trillion over 10 years.

TRUMP: What do they know? George, what do they know? I mean they’ve been doing this stuff for years.

STEPHANOPOULOS: They run the numbers.

TRUMP: Can I tell you what? They’ve been doing this stuff for years. They’re so off. You look at their past projections, they are so far off. People — this is a very dynamic plan.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So it’s not going to increase the deficit?

TRUMP: People are going — well, if it works the way I want it to work it’s not because we’re going to bring back jobs. I am going to bring back so many jobs. One of the things that we’re coming out with in the next three or four weeks is cutting. And the cutting is a big part of my plan.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you’re going to come up with cuts that will close that hole?

TRUMP: We’re going to come up with very substantial cuts and —

STEPHANOPOULOS: Give me one.

TRUMP: The Department of Education. We’re going to do cutting. And the economy is going to grow exponentially.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You also said that this tax plan is going to cost you a fortune.

TRUMP: It will cost me a lot of money.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you get there?

TRUMP: Well, I’ll tell you what. I have carried interest, like a lot of other people do, and carried interest is a wonderful thing, but it’s unfair. . . .

 

STEPHANOPOULOS: According to your financial disclosure you made, what, about $250 million in the last year?

TRUMP: $605 million.

STEPHANOPOULOS: OK, 605. The top rate goes from 40 percent to about 25 percent.

TRUMP: Right.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Capital gains comes down from 23 to 20.

TRUMP: Right.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s a huge — that’s tens of millions of savings for you.

TRUMP: Everybody’s going to save, according to my plan, and that money — you know where that money’s going?

STEPHANOPOULOS: That means you’re not going to be spending — you’re not going to be paying more taxes though.

TRUMP: 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 that are frankly some of them are ridiculous. You’re entitled to deductions. So I don’t know that I am. I think —

STEPHANOPOULOS: But not 605 million dollars’ worth.

TRUMP: I think that probably I’ll end up paying more under this. To be honest, I don’t think I’m 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: Bottom line, you do accept that you are 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 so.

Moreover, as Chuck Todd’s questioning over on NBC revealed, Trump isn’t going to touch entitlements either so the plan is virtually certain to bust the budget. In other words Trump’s main claims — it would not increase the deficit and it would soak the rich — are nonsense.

More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/10/05/trumps-fade-into-incoherence/