Americans say they want to see candidate tax returns (because they don’t like Donald Trump)

By Philip Bump 

August 29, 2016

A new poll from Monmouth University includes a bit of data that will quickly be embraced by supporters of Hillary Clinton. It has been 440 days since Donald Trump has failed to release his tax returns — but 6 in 10 likely voters say that it's very or somewhat important for a candidate to do so. Public pressure! Can Trump survive the weight of public opinion? Etc.!

This question is a great example of data that deserves more context. For example, here's what happens when you compare the results of that question with three other questions asked by Monmouth:

• Do you think Trump is keeping his taxes private because of the audit process or because there is something in those returns he doesn't want the public to know?
• Is your general impression of Trump favorable or unfavorable?
• Who do you plan to support in November?

Responses to those questions, when broken down by party, look ... awfully similar.

Eighty percent of Democrats think that it's very or somewhat important to release taxes — and 82 percent think Trump is hiding something, and 84 percent view him unfavorably, and 85 percent pick Clinton in a head-to-head match-up.

The numbers for Republicans and independents are a bit more mixed. Fifty-four percent of Republicans think that releasing tax returns isn't important — while 47 percent take him at his word that an audit is the cause. Trump gets only 78 percent of support from Republicans, which is likely why he continues to trail Clinton overall (by 7 points). We'll come back to that.

Independents are more skeptical of Trump — and Clinton. Asked whether the overlap between Clinton's work at the State Department and her family's foundation was nothing out of the ordinary or a sign of special treatment, more than half of Democrats said it was nothing out of the ordinary, while 58 percent of independents said it indicated special treatment. (And 80 percent of Republicans said the same.)

In other words, Republicans view Trump more generously (including on tax returns) and Democrats view Clinton more generously ... and independents dislike them both. That's made obvious in Monmouth's delineation of how voters feel about the two candidates: A plurality dislike them both.

If you don't like a candidate, you'll offer skepticism about their behavior. That's the trend in that first set of graphs, not that Americans are suddenly curious about taxable income figures.

The implications here are important. Adding Monmouth's new head-to-head numbers into the RealClearPolitics average, you can see that Clinton continues to hold a fairly steady lead over Trump even as his numbers recover a bit.

With the election drawing closer, Trump continues to be mired in the lower 40s in polling, with Clinton about 6 points ahead of him. Trump's failure to consolidate support from Republicans has been a constant since the conventions, and so far nothing his campaign has done has changed that. So how does he, once and for all, get past 45 percent in the polls — much less past Clinton?

Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, recognizes that part of the problem is that people like to talk about the things that Trump does instead of the positions he advocates. (This is in part because the positions he advocates are not exactly set in stone.) She has called for the campaign to focus on policy (even as Trump's signature policy stance on immigration seems to be in flux). But as Trump himself noted a year ago, voters don't really care that much about policy proposals, any more than they are interested in poring over tax returns. Whether or not Trump releases his tax returns, it's unlikely to change much in the race because so many voters have already made up their minds about their distaste for both candidates.

In other words, the tax poll numbers don't really tell us anything about how Americans feel about taxes. But they tell us a lot about how people feel about the candidates, which is why, after 440 days of campaigning, Trump is trailing the way that he is.

Trump's False claim Hillary Clinton wants to raise taxes on African-American businesses 50 percent

By Joshua Gillin 

August 26th, 2016 

Donald Trump’s newfound focus on black voters collided with a prior talking point on Hillary Clinton’s tax plan during a speech at a New Hampshire rally. But in the process he made an already inaccurate argument even more wrong.

The GOP presidential candidate attacked Clinton on several fronts Aug. 25 in Manchester, including over alleged elements of her tax plan.

"She wants to raise taxes on African-American owned businesses to as much as nearly 50 percent more than they're paying now," Trump said.

Trump’s campaign did not respond to our requests to show us how Clinton’s tax targets black business owners with close to a 50-percent tax increase. It appears Trump’s penchant for going off-script further undermined his own attack.

Wrong about rates

Let’s acknowledge immediately that Trump’s focus on African-Americans, as if Clinton planned to tax them as some vindictive measure against black-owned businesses, is misleading.

Trump has been attempting to woo black voters lately, so he likely was trying to present his point about taxation in a way that resonated with African Americans. But it comes across as Clinton targeting blacks in a way that would not apply in the tax code. There’s nothing in her tax plan that spotlights the country’s 2.6 million or so black-owned businesses in such a way.

"The tax code is race neutral. Nothing targets — or gives preference to — anyone based on race," said Roberton Williams, a fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. "Whether a provision disproportionately affects people of one race relative to those of another race depends on particular situations but isn't based on race."

We have an idea what Trump was trying to say. Earlier this month, he told a Detroit crowd on Aug. 8 that Clinton "would tax many small businesses by almost 50 percent." We rated this statement Mostly False in a previous fact-check.

The Trump campaign told us then that his earlier statement referred to a 4 percent surcharge Clinton has proposed on high earners. Using an analysis of Clinton’s plan from the Tax Policy Center, the campaign pointed out the top tax rate is currently 39.6 percent. A business owner also could potentially be paying 3.8 percent in Medicare taxes, reaching a rate of 43.4 percent.

Add the 4 percent surcharge on top of that and you reach 47.4 percent. That was the "nearly 50 percent" part.

Except it’s not as simple as that. Clinton's proposed 4 percent tax increase only applies to taxpayers who have an adjusted gross income of over $5 million, and only income in excess of $5 million would be taxed at that extra 4 percent.

That’s not a lot of business owners. Only about 0.5 percent of all small businesses in the nation reported a profit of more than $1 million in 2011, according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis. Overall, only a bit more than 34,000 of the 150 million or so tax returns filed in 2013 reported income of more than $5 million. That's an even smaller fraction — about 0.02 percent of all earners.

But Trump made it worse for himself in this new description. The prepared remarks for his speech read, "She wants to raise taxes on African-American owned businesses to as much as nearly 50 percent." This is important to note, because he then ad-libs and changes the meaning of the sentence by adding "more than they're paying now."

That means instead of saying they will be taxed at 50 percent, they will be taxed at a rate almost 50 percent higher than they are currently. That’s a different assertion.

Experts told us it’s difficult to find anything in Clinton’s plan that telegraphs such a hefty increase.

Leonard Burman, director at the Tax Policy Center, said the effective tax rate for the highest-earning self-employed people would only go up by about 7 percent. If Trump were referring to corporations, which are affected by the rise in tax rates on capital gains and dividends, the marginal effective tax rate on new corporate investment would still go up by less than 10 percent.

Williams further noted that Clinton’s proposed "Buffett Rule" requiring people with income greater than $1 million to pay a minimum 30 percent tax rate could theoretically boost a person’s tax by more than 50 percent. But the conditions would have to be specific, so that result probably wouldn’t bump tax rates on business income by 50 percent. Her proposed 28 percent cap on the value of tax preferences — think credits, deductions, exemptions and so forth — also doesn’t appear likely to produce such a dramatic change.

"There might be an odd case in which that would boost taxes a lot but nothing pops into my brain," Williams said. He added that it’s difficult to be certain absolutely no one would face such an increase, but "it doesn't look like any of (Clinton’s) plans could increase a person's tax bill by half."

Our ruling

Trump said Clinton "wants to raise taxes on African-American owned businesses to as much as nearly 50 percent more than they're paying now."

Putting aside the irrelevance of the comment about African-Americans, the campaign never specified exactly how Clinton’s tax plan would do that to anyone. Clinton has proposed some tax increases on higher earners, but barring an extremely unusual case, nothing she has proposed approaches boosting taxes by almost 50 percent.

We rate the statement False.

Donald Trump wrong that Virginia saw "huge increase" in illegal immigration under Tim Kaine

By Sean Gorman 

August 29th, 2016

Donald Trump depicted Tim Kaine’s 2006-10 tenure as governor of Virginia as a painful time of tax hike proposals and rising unemployment.

"He also oversaw a huge increase in illegal immigration, a tremendous increase," Trump told supporters at an Aug. 20 rally in Fredericksburg.

We wondered whether Trump was correct that, under Kaine’s governorship, illegal immigration spiked. We emailed the Trump campaign twice to ask about the basis of his statement, but we did not hear back.

The GOP presidential nominee’s campaign posted a version of his speech online that includes a footnote to support his claim. It’s a 2007 editorial in The Washington Times that accused Kaine of failing to crack down on unauthorized immigrants who commit crimes.

But the editorial provides no insight into whether the number of illegal immigrants in the state rose during Kaine’s tenure.

For additional insight, we reached out to the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center, which estimates the size of the illegal immigration population in each state. Here are Pew’s figures on the size of Virginia’s illegal immigrant population by year:

•2005 - 250,000

•2006 - 250,000

•2007 - 250,000

•2008 - 275,000

•2009 - 250,000

•2010 - 275,000

For 2011 and 2012, the latest years for which figures are available, the size of the illegal immigrant population also was 275,000, Pew found.

So when Kaine entered office in 2006, the size of the illegal immigrant population was 250,000, it rose to 275,000 in 2008 and then went back down to its original level during 2009, his last full year in office, according to the Pew figures.

If you go to 2010, during which Kaine served only the first two weeks, the illegal immigrant population was 275,000 - or 25,000 higher than when he entered the governor’s mansion.

While a 10 percent increase in the illegal immigrant population between 2006 and 2010 might seem significant, it’s actually not much of a change at all from a statistical perspective, said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew.

Passel explained that the research group’s illegal immigration figures are not meant to be exact figures on the size of the state’s illegal immigrant population. Rather, they are estimates culled from a sample of data collected by the Census Bureau and are subject to rounding. Just like a public polls drawn from a sample, there’s a margin of error involved in the estimates.

During Kaine’s time in office, the annual size of the illegal immigrant population could be 15,000 to 20,000 higher or lower than the mid-range estimate Pew reported each year, according to its report. So it’s possible that a 25,000 increase from year-to-year might not outpace the Pew study’s margin of error.

The bottom line, during Kaine’s tenure the size of the illegal immigrant population remained flat, Passel said.

Nationally, the illegal immigrant population peaked in 2007 at 12.2 million and fell to 11.3 million in 2013, Pew’s figures show. A major reason for that drop was the impact of the Great Recession, Passel told us.

The Trump campaign didn’t respond to a question we posed about how Kaine’s policies as governor would have led to an increase in illegal immigration.

Analysts told us that beyond state laws, many other factors contribute to where illegal immigrants choose to reside.

Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokeswoman for the Migration Policy Institute, told us illegal immigrants often settle in a state based on how its economy is doing, and whether they already have family living there.

Our ruling

Trump said that while Kaine was governor, he "oversaw a huge increase in illegal immigration, a tremendous increase."

But figures from the Pew Hispanic Center show that the size of the illegal immigrant population essentially was flat during Kaine’s term as governor. It’s certainly note the "huge" and "tremendous" increase that Trump makes it out to be.

We rate his claim False.

The lies Trump told this week: from immigration to the safety of inner cities

Lauren Gambino

8/26/2016

GOP nominee softened his stance on the signature issue of his campaign and talked African American unemployment while trying to court the non-white vote

Immigration

“They’ll pay back taxes, they have to pay taxes, there’s no amnesty, as such, there’s no amnesty, but we will work with them” – 24 August, to Sean Hannity, Fox News.

Last summer, Donald Trump burst into the political ring with a fiery proposal to build a “great, great wall” along the US-Mexico border – paid for by Mexico. An ultra-hardline stance on immigration has remained at the heart of his campaign, though reporters have had a notoriously difficult time pinning him down on what he actually proposes to do to or with the estimated 11 million undocumented migrants who currently live in America. He has suggested a “deportation force” to remove them.

“We’re rounding ’em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And they’re going to be happy because they want to be legalized,” Trump told CBS last September. “And, by the way, I know it doesn’t sound nice. But not everything is nice.”

On Saturday, after meeting with his Hispanic advisory council, reports emerged that the Republican candidate was softening his stance. The next day, newly installed campaign manager Kellyanne Conway appeared to waffle on whether Trump was still committed to deportation. In an interview with Fox News, Trump himself denied that he was “flip-flopping”. To gain more time to fine-tune, the campaign postponed a speech he was due to give on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Trump said immigrants not in the US legally would not get citizenship – but also appeared to offer a path a forward and to contradict his previous promises that undocumented migrants would be deported.

“They’ll pay back taxes, they have to pay taxes, there’s no amnesty, as such, there’s no amnesty, but we work with them,” Trump said in a town hall with Fox News anchor Sean Hannity. The next morning, he met African American and Latino activists at Trump Tower in New York.

Such apparent moderation on immigration comes as Trump tries to aggressively court Hispanic and African American voters. Polling shows Trump trailing Hillary Clinton. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday gives Clinton a 62-point lead over Trump among likely non-white voters.

War zones are safer than America’s inner cities

“The Democrats have failed completely in the inner cities. For those hurting the most who have been failed and failed by their politicians – year after year, failure after failure, worse numbers after worse numbers. Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing, no homes, no ownership. Crime at levels that nobody’s seen. You can go to war zones in countries that we are fighting and it’s safer than living in some of our inner cities that are run by the Democrats. And I ask you this, I ask you this – crime, all of the problems – to the African Americans, who I employ so many, so many people, to the Hispanics, tremendous people: what the hell do you have to lose?” – 22 August, speech, Akron, Ohio

There’s a lot to unpack in this statement. At best, Trump is offering a broad-brush portrait of America’s cities and at worst he’s using language that is offensive to the very voters he’s trying to reach.

Trump also claims crime is at “levels that nobody’s seen”. Based on the context and past statements about crime statistics, we can assume he means crime is at record heights. But this bleak picture of crime-ridden American streets more dangerous than parts of the world where the US is engaged in military action, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, runs counter to a trend of declining crime that has persisted for more than a quarter of a century. 

Though crime statistics are notoriously ripe for manipulation, studies show a steady decline since 1991. Particular demographics, particularly low-income areas, do continue to show high rates of criminal activity.

Trump also claims to employ “so many, so many” African Americans in his various businesses. However, a June analysis by the Associated Press found “few if any” black executives in the upper echelon of Trump’s organization.

Trump has recently dialed up his outreach to African American voters, but he delivers his speeches before largely white audiences. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed Trump receiving the support of only 1% of African American voters.

“Look at how much African American communities are suffering from Democratic control … 58% of your youth is unemployed, what the hell do you have to lose?” – 19 August, Dimondale, Michigan

Trump and his campaign raised eyebrows when they repeated this eye-popping statistic: that more than half of young black men and women are unemployed.

The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) put the unemployment rate among 16- to 19-year-old black Americans at 25.7%, adjusted seasonally. So how did he get to 58%?

The campaign’s economic adviser, David Malpass, told ABC News it began with BLS data from 2015 and broke out the numbers for 16- to 24-year-old African Americans. As part of its calculation, the campaign included labor force participants and those outside the labor force, including people who have no job or are not looking for one, such as students and retirees. These are sectors of the population the federal government does not count as unemployed.

The campaign then divided the larger number by the population of the 16-to-24 age group to reach 58.5%, ABC reported. Economists have said it is statistically misleading to include segments of the population that are actively not seeking employment.

Gripped By Hysterical Panic, Trump Lies About Hillary Clinton’s Medical Records

By Jason Easley 

Aug 28th, 2016 

Donald Trump has gone full Hillary Clinton health conspiracy by tweeting the false claim that Clinton has not released detailed medical records.

Donald Trump has gone full Hillary Clinton health conspiracy by tweeting the false claim that Clinton has not released detailed medical records.

Hillary Clinton released a detailed two-page letter about her medical history more than one year ago.

In the letter, Clinton’s doctor provided details about her medical history, “Mrs. Clinton is a healthy 67-year old female whose current medical conditions include hypothyroidiam and seasonal pollen allergies.” Clinton’s letter provided specific test results from her most recent physical and contained everything that Trump’s letter, which was written in 5 minutes without a physical exam being performed, lacked.

Trump’s tweet was a classic case of projection. The Republican nominee is under fire for releasing no medical records, so his answer is to project the criticism onto his opponent as a means of deflecting attention from the fact that voters have no details about his medical history.

Donald Trump was using a tactic that was a direct callback to his birther days of yesteryear. Trump is claiming that Hillary Clinton’s two page detailed letter (a.k.a. the medical records short form) is not good enough. Trump is going to demand to see all of Hillary Clinton’s records (a.k.a. the long form medical records).

The GOP nominee’s panicked tweet is another indication that none of the tactics that Trump used to win the Republican primary are working against Clinton. Trump is still searching for a way to put Hillary Clinton on the defensive, but reviving questions about his own health and failure to release medical records is a stupid strategy that is destined to fail.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump politicizes Dwyane Wade's loss

Kelly Dwyer Ball Don't Lie Aug 27, 2016,

Ball Don’t Lie’s Eric Freeman recently relayed the sad news about Nykea Aldridge, a mother of four who was shot and killed outside the Parkway Garden Homes on Chicago’s South Side on Friday. Aldridge, who is the cousin of Chicago Bulls star Dwyane Wade, was apparently an innocent bystander caught in the middle of a gunfight.

The NBA community, including Wade, reacted in measured tones about the murder:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, however, waited an entire day to politicize the tragedy as a sort of stump speech-cum-declaration on Saturday morning

The immediate eye roll comes from the misspelling of Dwyane Wade’s name, but not only is this a common problem even for those that write about D-Wade (for years I filed automatic spellcheck-addled columns to Sports Illustrated’s website that mentioned “Dwayne Wade”), but also busy politicians. Then-presidential candidate John Kerry infamously once spoke of “Lambert Field” while stumping in Wisconsin in 2004, while the late former Boston mayor Thomas Menino repeatedly whiffed on the names of a series of local legends.

Trump, hours after originally posting it, deleted the original tweet. Not to change the content of his character tone, but the spelling of Wade’s first name

You’d like to think that if the instinct to use a stranger’s name in order to boost your own election odds would pop up, you’d at least go out of your way to make sure the stranger’s name (no matter how famous the stranger is) would be spelled correctly. This would be treating the author in question as a rational human, however.

What should be offensive, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on or who you’re planning on voting for this November, is the idea that Trump would construct a tweet like this in the first place.

To pass on the plight of any number of grieving families that have lost a loved one to gun violence in order to shoehorn the (misspelled) name of a famous person into 140 characters, and immediately associate that famous person’s race and loss with the apparent confirmation that millions of people will follow in lockstep in a national election’s voting process due to this horrific news.

Others didn’t strive for the level of tact I attempted to approximate above

Fox News Turns On Trump And Busts Him For Lying About Black Poverty Statistics

By Jason Easley 

Aug 28th, 2016 

Donald Trump is so far out of touch reality that Fox News Sunday busted the Republican nominee for lying about African-American poverty statistics.

Donald Trump is so far out of touch reality that Fox News Sunday busted the Republican nominee for lying about African-American poverty statistics.

Transcript via Fox News Sunday:

WALLACE: All right. Let’s move on to another one. Donald Trump has also been reaching out to African-Americans this week, asking, what do you have to lose after decades of Democratic neglect? Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Poverty, rejection, horrible education, no housing, no homes, no ownership, crime at levels that nobody’s seen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: But, Kellyanne, that totally misrepresents what blacks face in this country. Trump says black youth unemployment is 58 percent. It’s actually 19 percent. Twenty-six percent of blacks live in poverty. That’s not good. But the vast majority do not.

How can Trump address the problem when he doesn’t seem to understand what it really is?

CONWAY: So as I understand it, Chris, the 58 percent refers to the number of African-American youth who are not working.

But you’re right. We’re also taking our message to African-Americans who are concerned about other things like lending, like housing, like discrimination. They may be unsafe. They may live in safe neighborhoods with fine schools, but it certainly isn’t what their children deserve. They deserve the same high-quality education as other children. And that’s his point.

A program that airs on the Fox networks is calling out Donald Trump for not understanding African-American economic issues. Fox has been showing signs for weeks that outside of Hannity and O’Reilly much of the programming is off of the Trump train.

One of the staples of Trump’s stump speech has been the statistics about African-American poverty, but even Fox News Sunday is saying that is Trump is lying.

Even worse, Trump’s own campaign manager didn’t mount much of push back when called out on the misrepresentation of African-American poverty. Donald Trump has taken the Republican Party so far away from reality that Fox News is fact checking him.

By debunking one of the Republican nominee’s main arguments to African-American voters, Chris Wallace and Fox News Sunday shoveled another scoop of dirt on to Donald Trump’s political grave.