Trump’s tax revelation could tarnish image that fueled rise

WASHINGTON (AP) — The bombshell revelations that President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he ran for office and paid no income taxes at all in many others threaten to undercut a pillar of his appeal among blue-collar voters and provide a new opening for his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, on the eve of the first presidential debate.

Trump has worked for decades to build an image of himself as a hugely successful business mogul — even choosing that moniker as his Secret Service code name. But The New York Times on Sunday revealed that he paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, the year he won the presidency, and in 2017, his first year in office. He paid no income taxes whatsoever in 10 of the previous 15 years, largely because he reported losing more money than he made, according to the Times, which obtained years’ worth of tax return data that the president had long fought to keep private.

The development comes at a particularly precarious moment for Trump, whose Republican campaign is struggling to overcome criticism of the president’s handling of the pandemic. It hands Biden an easy attack line heading into Tuesday’s debate. And with early voting already happening in some states and Election Day just over a month away, Trump may be running out of time to turn his campaign around.

“Donald Trump needs this election to be about Joe Biden as a choice,” said longtime GOP consultant Alex Conant. “This keeps the focus squarely on Trump’s character and the chaos going into the most important night of the campaign, the debate.”

Of course, Trump has repeatedly faced — and survived — devastating turns that would have sunk any other politician. That includes, most notably, the stunning “Access Hollywood” tape released in October 2016, in which Trump was recorded bragging about kissing and groping women without their permission. The video’s release came just two days before Trump was set to face then-candidate Hillary Clinton in their second debate and was considered a death knell to his campaign at the time.

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NY Times: Trump paid $750 in US income taxes in 2016, 2017

President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he ran for president and in his first year in the White House, according to a report Sunday in The New York Times.

Trump, who has fiercely guarded his tax filings and is the only president in modern times not to make them public, paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the past 15 years.

The details of the tax filings complicate Trump’s description of himself as a shrewd and patriotic businessman, revealing instead a series of financial losses and income from abroad that could come into conflict with his responsibilities as president. The president’s financial disclosures indicated he earned at least $434.9 million in 2018, but the tax filings reported a $47.4 million loss.

The tax filings also illustrate how a reputed billionaire could pay little to nothing in taxes, while someone in the middle class could pay substantially more than him. Roughly half of Americans pay no income taxes, primarily because of how low their incomes are. But IRS figures indicate that the average tax filer paid roughly $12,200 in 2017, about 16 times more than what the president paid.

The disclosure, which the Times said comes from tax return data it obtained extending over two decades, comes at a pivotal moment ahead of the first presidential debate Tuesday and weeks before a divisive election against Democrat Joe Biden.

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5 takeaways from NY Times report on Trump’s tax returns

WASHINGTON (AP) — A New York Times report that President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax the year he entered the White House — and, thanks to colossal losses, no income tax at all in 11 of the 18 years that the Times reviewed — served to raise doubts about Trump’s self-image as a shrewd and successful businessman.

That Sunday’s report came just weeks before Trump’s re-election bid served to intensify the spotlight on Trump the businessman — an identity that he has spent decades cultivating and that helped him capture the presidency four years ago in his first run for political office. The Times’ report deepens the uncertainty surrounding a tumultuous presidential campaign set against the backdrop of a viral pandemic, racial unrest in American cities and a ferocious battle over the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Since entering the White House, Trump has broken with tradition set by his predecessors by not only refusing to release his tax returns but by waging a legal battle to keep them hidden. The Times report suggests why that might have been so. It reported that many of Trump’s top businesses are losing money, even as those losses have helped him shrink his federal tax bill to essentially nothing.

Eugene Steuerle, a tax expert at the Urban Institute, said he wasn’t surprised that it turns out that Trump had paid almost no federal income tax. Most commercial real estate developers deduct large interest payments on their debts from taxable income, thereby lowering their tax bills. Typically, they also often avoid capital gains taxes by plowing profits from the sale of one building into the purchase of another.

“Most tax experts expected you would find little in the way of tax payments by President Trump,” said Steuerle, who served as a Treasury Department official under President Ronald Reagan.

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Trump vows quick court vote, Biden urges delay for Nov. 3

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Sunday that confirmation of his Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett will go “quickly” but his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, implored the Republican-led Senate to hold off on voting on her nomination until after the Nov. 3 election to “let the people decide.”

Speaking at a press conference at the White House, the president spotlighted Barrett’s Roman Catholic religion, portraying her as a victim of attacks on her faith. But it’s her conservative approach to the law, particularly health care access that is drawing opposition from Democrats, not her private beliefs.

“It’s a disgrace,” Trump said. He vowed she will be confirmed “very quickly.”

Trump’s announcement of Barrett for the seat held by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is launching a high-stakes, fast-track election season fight over confirmation of a conservative judge who is expected to shift the court rightward as it reviews health care, abortion access and other hot-button issues.

Biden on Sunday appealed directly to his former colleagues in the Senate to “take a step back from the brink.”

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Nearly 1M who died of COVID-19 also illuminated treatment

The nearly 1 million people around the world who have lost their lives to COVID-19 have left us a gift: Through desperate efforts to save their lives, scientists now better understand how to treat and prevent the disease — and millions of others may survive.

Ming Wang, 71, and his wife were on a cruise from Australia, taking a break after decades of running the family’s Chinese restaurant in Papillion, Nebraska, when he was infected. In the 74 days he was hospitalized before his death in June, doctors frantically tried various experimental approaches, including enrolling him in a study of an antiviral drug that ultimately showed promise.

“It was just touch and go. Everything they wanted to try we said yes, do it,” said Wang’s daughter, Anne Peterson. “We would give anything to have him back, but if what we and he went through would help future patients, that’s what we want.”

Patients are already benefiting. Though more deaths are expected this fall because of the recent surge in coronavirus infections in the U.S. and elsewhere, there also are signs that death rates are declining and that people who get the virus now are faring better than did those in the early months of the pandemic.

“Some of the reason we’re doing better is because of the advances,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, told The Associated Press. Several drugs have proved useful and doctors know more about how to care for the sickest patients in hospitals, he said.

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Federal judge postpones Trump ban on popular app TikTok

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Sunday postponed a Trump administration order that would have banned the popular video sharing app TikTok from U.S. smartphone app stores around midnight.

A more comprehensive ban remains scheduled for November, about a week after the presidential election. The judge, Carl Nichols of the U.S District Court for the District of Columbia, did not agree to postpone the later ban.

The ruling followed an emergency hearing Sunday morning in which lawyers for TikTok argued that the administration’s app-store ban would infringe on First Amendment rights and do irreparable harm to the business.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump declared that TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, was a threat to national security and that it must either sell its U.S. operations to American companies or be barred from the country.

TikTok is still scrambling to firm up a deal tentatively struck a week ago in which it would partner with Oracle, a huge database-software company, and Walmart in an effort to win the blessing of both the Chinese and American governments. In the meantime, it is fighting to keep the app available in the U.S.

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Report: Cardinal Pell returning to Vatican in crisis

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis’ former finance minister, will soon return to the Vatican during an extraordinary economic scandal for the first time since he was cleared of child abuse allegations in Australia five months ago, a newspaper reported Monday.

Pell will fly back to Rome on Tuesday, Herald-Sun newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt wrote. The report by a vocal champion of the cardinal did not cite a source for the cardinal’s plans.

The Associated Press attempted to contact Pell where he lives in a Sydney seminary for confirmation and was told by a woman who answered the phone: “We have no comment.” The Sydney Archdiocese did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Pell’s travel plans.

Pell’s reported return follows Francis last week firing one of the cardinal’s most powerful opponents, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, over a financial scandal.

Pell was regarded as the third highest-ranking Vatican official and was attempting to wrestle the Holy See’s opaque finances into order when he returned to his native Australia in 2017 to clear himself of decades-old allegations of child sex abuse.

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Nearly a year after sudden exit, Shepard Smith returns to TV

NEW YORK (AP) — Two weeks shy of a year after abruptly quitting Fox News Channel with a declaration that “truth will always matter,” Shepard Smith returns to television this week at his unexpected new home.

He begins a general interest nightly newscast Wednesday at 7 p.m. on the financial network CNBC, putting him back in the time slot he loved before Fox moved him to the afternoon seven years ago.

The 56-year-old newsman, a Fox News original who joined that network at its start in 1996, says he’s relishing the fresh start.

“We’re going to come out and do just the news,” he said. “We’re not planning to do any analysis in our news hour. We’re going to have journalists, reporters, sound and video. We’re going to have newsmakers and experts … but no pundits. We’re going to leave the opinion to others. It’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to do. It’s what I’ve been working at for 30 years.”

He’ll work out of a new studio that’s been built for him at CNBC’s New Jersey headquarters by three crews that kept construction going 24 hours a day over eight weeks.

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Trump ex-campaign boss hospitalized amid threat to harm self

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale was hospitalized Sunday after he threatened to harm himself, according to Florida police and campaign officials.

Police officers talked Parscale out of his Fort Lauderdale home after his wife called police to say that he had multiple firearms and was threatening to hurt himself.

Police Sgt. DeAnna Greenlaw said Parscale was hospitalized under the state’s Baker Act, which allows anyone deemed to be a threat to themselves or others to be detained for 72 hours for psychiatric evaluation.

“Brad Parscale is a member of our family and we love him,” said Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh. “We are ready to support him and his family in any way possible.”

Parscale was demoted from the campaign manager’s post in July but remained part of the campaign, helping run its digital operation.

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Back to the Finals: Heat oust Celtics, move to title series

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — It was exactly one year ago Sunday when Jimmy Butler walked into the Miami Heat practice gym, took a seat on a makeshift stage and said he wanted to be part of the team’s next title run.

He’ll have that chance.

The Heat are going to the NBA Finals — surprising many, perhaps, but not themselves. Bam Adebayo scored a season-high 32 points and grabbed 14 rebounds, Butler scored 22 points and the Heat won the Eastern Conference finals for the sixth time by topping the Boston Celtics 125-113 on Sunday night.

“This group, more than anything, they just love to compete,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said during the trophy celebration.

The Heat won the series 4-2 — and now, they’ll see LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers for the title. Game 1 of that series is Wednesday night.