Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated that “Corporations paying far too much, far too much. Middle income people are being decimated” and “I was only kidding” in reference to a prior statement that “hedge fund guys are going to pay up” at a speech in Dallas, TX on Monday.
Trump said, “I have a friend in the hedge fund business — not really a friend, not actually a nice guy, but he’d be good representing us, I will tell you, because, by the time I finish, he might not have much of a hedge fund left. But I said, ‘What did you make last year?’ He said ‘About 250 million.’ This is serious, I said, ‘Oh, that’s a lot of money. What did you pay in taxes?’ He goes, ‘Don, practically nothing.’ That was a couple of years ago. I never forgot it. The other day he calls me up because he hears me talking about hedge fund guys are going to pay up. And he calls me up the other day. I was only kidding, you know, when I said that, I was sort of — he doesn’t know what to do. The truth is they’ll do just fine. They’re going to do just fine, because we’re going to make the country so successful, they’ll do just fine. They’ll end up doing better. They’ll end up doing better. But we’ve got to lower taxes for a lot of people. Corporations paying far too much, far too much. Middle income people are being decimated. They’re being decimated.”
He continued, “I mean, we have a group of 200 guys, but, the middle income in this country is being decimated, and we’re going to change it. We’re going to change it. So, I’ll be announcing, over the next three or so weeks, I’ll be announcing, I think a great tax plan. I know the tax code. I know everything about it, probably as well as anybody there is, right? And we’re going to be doing something that’s going to be really pro-growth, really reduction in taxes. We’re going to get the $2.5 trillion that’s in other countries, we’re going to get it back. They can’t — no, we’re going to get it back. And you know, you have corporate inversion. Does anybody know what that means? You know, in the old days people might leave New York for Texas, or they may go from New Jersey to Florida, or whatever. it’s not that way anymore. Now they go from this country to other countries. And they go for two reasons, lower taxes, lower labor, but lower taxes. You have countries that want to charge them nothing, so they take these companies, and these guys, they make a fortune. They have no real loyalty, in many cases, they have no real loyalty to the United States. They want to show a good profit and loss statement. So take, and they go to another country, and all of a sudden their numbers look good. And they can’t bring their money back in. And by the way, for two-and-a-half, three years I’ve seen — every politician agrees that we should lower the tax on bringing money ,because it’s so onerous that nobody in this room would bring that money back. Everybody says it. For two and a half years the Democrats, the Republicans, the liberals, the conservatives, everybody. They can’t make a deal. We have a government that’s really messed up because we don’t have a leader at the top. A right leader could get it done.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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