Subject: The 5-Minute Fix: Donald Trump's tax minefield?
From: The Washington Post <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 20 May 2016 19:00:36 -0400

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THE 5-MINUTE FIX
 
Keeping up with politics is easy now

By Amber Phillips

A minute now to talk about Donald Trump's taxes. I know, I know. It's Friday, and that's a little heavy. So I'll make this as painless as possible by starting us out with a number.
$0. That's how many dollars Trump paid on taxes at least two years in the late 1970s.
The already-wealthy developer took advantage of a tax-code provision that allowed him to report negative income, reports The Washington Post's Drew Harwell. Harwell found this out by digging up a 1981 report by New Jersey gambling regulators that shared some of Trump's tax returns.
The story's going viral, and here's why.
It hits Trump on an issue that has helped make him such a popular, populist candidate. One of the billionaire's favorite talking points is to deride equally wealthy people, like CEOs, for using tax loopholes "to get away with murder."
"They make a fortune; they pay no tax," Trump said last year on CBS, Harwell noted. "It's ridiculous, okay?"
That sounds great to working class voters who feel like the rich are indeed getting away with murder while their own paychecks stagnate. But what if Trump is one of those guys getting away with murder? He has also bragged that he's gotten away with paying as little taxes as possible -- the implication being he's savvy enough to game the system and therefore savvy enough to run a country.
So he could surely try and talk himself out of trouble here if it turns out he hasn't paid much; the prospect of him being forced to do that is now very real.
(AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
What's more, it sounds incongruous with his populist, tax-the-rich-more pitch. Complicating things, Trump has refused to release his recent tax returns. It's not a rule that's written in stone or anything, but it's notable that Trump would be the first major party nominee in 40 years not to let Americans have a closer look at his financial life via tax returns. And the pressure for him to disclose will only grow in the coming months.
Trump retorts that his taxes are "none of your business." Judging by the popularity of this story on how little taxes he paid almost four decades ago, Americans appear pretty interested in making it their business.
One more concerning number about Trump

Two numbers, actually: Seven in 10. That's how many people, according to a new New York Times/CBS News poll, do NOT think Trump has the right temperament to be president.
Fix Boss Chris Cillizza explains why that should be troubling for Republicans: "It's hard to see any candidate — Democrat or Republican, Donald Trump or not — winning a general election for the most powerful and visible job in the country if seven in 10 voters don't believe you have the temperament to be the nation's chief executive."
Seems about right. Trump has proven us wrong before, but that would seem to be a pretty big hurdle.
Congressional Republicans get that. And many are trying to run as fast as they can from Trump.
These people are most definitely not congressional Republicans. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg )
This is an unprecedented situation, and there's no playbook for how GOP candidates should handle such a potentially toxic nominee. But some are doing it better than others.
In fact, I ranked the top 10 most tortured responses to whether Republicans will support, endorse or campaign with Trump. Here are a few of the most awkward:

"Good question," Rep. Bruce Poliquin, a vulnerable incumbent from Maine, said in March when asked if he'd appear with Trump in his district. And then: "An uncomfortable pause ensued as the question hung in the air and Poliquin waited for an elevator to the House floor."
Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.): "I am going to certainly endorse the Republican nominee, and obviously it looks like that will be Mr. Trump." And then: "To me, support versus endorse are two totally different things."
Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.): Ayotte has repeatedly said she'd support the nominee. But her communications director also had this to say: "As a candidate herself, she hasn't and isn't planning to endorse anyone this cycle."

While Poliquin is doing the equivalent of burying his head in the sand, Ayotte, Johnson and other Republicans are trying to have it both ways by drawing a distinction between support and the supposedly more active verb, endorse. But we maintain it's a distinction without a real difference: The first definition of the word endorse literally includes the word "support."

Here's why they're treading so carefully
(Philip Bump / The Washington Post)
Split-ticket voting -- voting for different parties in different races on the same ballot -- is simply not something states and people do very much anymore. The Fix's Philip Bump helped illustrate this by pulling data of which votes for U.S. Senate match the presidential race, and which ones are split. You can see the yellow line indicating split votes -- voting for one party for president and another for Senate -- has gone way down since the '90s.
There are a few reasons for this, but a major one is that our politics are simply more polarized than they used to be, so there's less crossover between the parties. That's bad news for Senate Republicans who are hoping voters turned off by Trump will still check the box for them this November.

That's it for this week. Have a fabulous weekend. I'm signing off with this gif of a very happy pit bull to draw your attention to Animalia -- a new blog headed by my colleague Karin Brulliard about how animals shape our lives. Check out this recent story on the changing public image of pit bulls.
Happy puppy. (giphy.com)
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