PER DONALD TRUMP’S TEAM, “WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE, HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GANDER”

…This would be an early picture of our First Lady if Trump were to win the White House

 

Trump’s wall around his records has set a new standard for secrecy for modern-day presidential candidates.

 

 

Do you recall when Donald Trump went after all of President Obama’s documents that proved everything about the presidents past?

 

Trump went on nationwide TV and not only went after what became his infamous “Birth Certificate”, he also said he wondered how “such a terrible student got into an Ivy League school like Harvard?”  By the time he was all done, Trump was asking for Obama’s college applications, his college transcripts and other school records, his long-form birth certificate and his passport records.  The real estate business executive also declared in a video released just before the 2012 election that: “We know very little about our president.”

 

Well, of course, this was all before Donald Trump himself decided to run for President of the United States.

 

Now we have what is called, “Turn-about is fair play!”  However, we all know, Donald Trump doesn’t believe in fair play.

 

As of today, not only has Trump continued to not release his tax returns, he has refused to release many of the same documents that he demanded from Obama.  That includes his college transcripts and passport records. He has ignored the decades-old tradition of all major nominees releasing their tax returns and other documentation to prove their readiness and fitness for office.  In addition, he has yet to release records showing why he received a medical deferment during the Vietnam War, and whether he has actually donated the millions of dollars he claims to have given to charity.

 

Trump’s building of a wall around his records is setting a new standard for secrecy for modern-day presidential candidates.

 

So far, Hillary Clinton has released tax returns from 2007 to 2014, and her campaign on Friday shared her 2015 return, as well as 10 years of returns from her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.

 

Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort told what in fact may be very true when he said that, “The only people who want Trump’s tax returns are the people who want to defeat him.”  Yes, that may be a fact, but that still doesn’t excuse Trump from doing what every other candidate has done for decades.

 

Some details have actually trickled out that reveal that Trump has a history of seriously shrinking his tax burden. According to filings, legal documents and other public records, he paid no federal income taxes for at least five years — 1978, 1979, 1984, 1991 and 1993. Tax analysts today say it is possible that Trump has continued to pay little to no income taxes thanks to generous tax deductions, including real estate depreciation.  In May, Trump said he fights “very hard to pay as little tax as possible.”

 

Now, before he was a presidential candidate, Trump presented himself as a champion of disclosure, particularly when it came to tax returns.  Back in 2011, he even said he would release his tax records if Obama released his long-form birth certificate.  But when Obama did produce his long-form birth certificate, Trump somehow forgot what he had promised and he decided to not release his tax returns.

 

In 2014, Trump said he would “absolutely” release his returns “if I decide to run for office.”  Then in 2015, he said his disclosure was contingent on finding “out the true story on Hillary’s emails.”

 

In January, Trump said he was almost ready to disclose his “very big . . . very beautiful” returns.  But then a month later, Trump again reversed course, citing on-going Internal Revenue Service audits of several years of his taxes.  This was even though the IRS had said this was no reason for not revealing his tax returns.

 

The questions are now coming up about Melania Trump’s immigration status.  These have emerged in the wake of newly published nude photographs of the former model.

 

One major publication has said that if Melania is to be our First Lady, then just as it was important for President Obama to show his birth certificate, the First Lady also needs to have been legally allowed in this country.

 

Melania has said that she came to the country in 1996 on a visa that allowed her to work, but the photos in question were taken in New York in 1995.  She met Donald Trump in 1998, and they were married in 2005. She has said she got a green card in 2001 and became a citizen in 2006.  But as of today, there are many questions and few answers about how Melania Trump actually immigrated to the US.  “I follow a law the way it’s supposed to be,” she told MSNBC earlier this year. “I never thought to stay here without papers. I had visa.”

 

The Trump campaign has not responded to requests for documentation to back up Melania’s account, or to explain the process through which she received her green card. And it is not clear when, or if, the campaign will schedule her a news conference as Donald Trump has previously mentioned.

 

“Let me set the record straight,” Melania Trump recently Tweeted. “I have at all times been in full compliance with the immigration laws of this country. Period.”

 

Trump’s approach to holding back this info is a calculation that it is better to deal with the criticism for withholding information, than the negative response that would come from giving the information to Trump’s opponents, as well as what his campaign sees as an unfair media.  (The same media that a Donald Trump needs to survive.)

 

“You give the New York Times 20,000 pages of tax returns, & they will give you 20,000 pages of defamation of character,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has been advising Trump.

 

Trump has also declined to release his educational records from the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree and took undergraduate classes at the famed Wharton School of Finance and Commerce.  As usual, Trump has claimed that he was a top student at this Ivy League institution, however his name does not appear on any lists of academic honors from the time.

 

While in college, Trump received four student deferments from the Vietnam War draft, and Trump has said that he received a fifth one for medical reasons because he had bone spurs that he says cleared up on their own. Trump has not produced the letter that he says he received from his doctor at the time documenting the problem.

 

Therefore, the reality of all this is that the Trump’s are asking the American public to: “Just take our word for it”.

 

Obviously, no one would consider doing anything like that if the tables were turned and the issue was being asked of the Clinton camp.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016