Following the lead of Thursday’s White House press briefing, MSNBC’s Hardball decided to not discuss how the Trump tax reform plan could help millions of Americans by unleashing massive economic growth, but instead how President Trump would benefit from it.
“Donald Trump ran for president promising to fight for the middle class against the elites as President Trump just released a tax plan that benefits the elites. In other words, the plan directly helps people like Donald Trump and his family,” host Chris Matthews whined at the top of the show.
Acting as though he’s a host on Bernie Sanders TV, Matthews continued:
Well, the reality is the tax plan will help the wealthy in a number of ways. It lowers the top taxed individual rate from 39.6 down to 35 percent, about a five-point drop. It ends the estate tax, a benefit that will save the wealthiest families, those couples with over $11 million to leave their children. It ends the alternative minimum tax, which has prevented people like Donald Trump from using deductions to get out of paying taxes...The New York Times reports while it would be “a potentially huge windfall for the wealthiest Americans, it would not directly benefit the bottom third of the population. As for the middle class, the benefits appear to be modest”...Donald Trump had his high margin of victory among middle class voters, those making between $50,000 and $100,000 a year. But, for those voters, this plan doesn't amount to anything.
After introducing his A-block panel, Matthews told MSNBC Live co-host Stephanie Ruhle that “[i]t just seems to me that these big, sparkling diamonds of tax cuts are out there for people with a lot of diamonds” and bemoaned the proposed deaths of the estate tax and alternative minimum tax.
Simply because it helps the wealthy, the panel couldn’t stand it. While it’s important to get the facts about whether the President benefits from it, Ruhle seemed almost exclusively concerned about that and not anything else.
If you're going to do all these things, make the argument that that is somehow going to help the economy. Instead, the President is straight up lying when he says he's not going to benefit from this. If he is worth $10 million — $10 billion like he says he is, don't you think that's going to be a massive win if there's no debt facts...If you get rid of the AMT, the one year we saw a couple pages of his taxes, if you didn't have the amt, that could have helped him to the tune $31 million. So spare me the President telling us this isn't going to help him and Gary Cohn, who knows better, says, well, America doesn't care. They just care about their own pocketbook? You know what? They care about their own pocketbook and they care about leadership lying.
Matthews later continued down that path, dancing around the notion that this tax plan has been produced solely to benefit Trump. I could be wrong, but I don’t recall the media ever causing a commotion about whether any Obama-era proposes proposed would have benefited him.
“[W]hat is it about Republicans and no matter who they are....they’re obsessed with the estate tax. They call it the death tax. They are obsessed with building like Latin American plantations that go on for generation after generation of wealth. Why do they want to have wealth go on and on and on in their families? It seems to be a big obsession with them,” Matthews wondered to CNBC’s Squawk Box co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Sorkin replied that this plan marks “the continuation of the aristocracy and it's coming to America if this were to pass and clearly, it would impact and benefit the Trump family” before pointing out how Trump could further benefit with his assets largely being holed up in pass-through corporations.
All this complaining fell in line with the tweet from Mic writer Emily Singer, who declared that tax-paying Americans receiving an $1,000 a year via a tax cut wouldn’t mean much of anything. Oh, sure, tell that to millennials like this writer struggling with student loans.
Ruhle also complained about the pass-through corporations while Sorkin circled back to wallowing in the fact that people in blue states could pay more if Trump’s tax plan succeeds:
This is a battle — not just an economic battle, but a battle between red states and blue states. One of the things that people aren’t talking about enough is the state and local tax deduction which, if you're in a blue state where most people work — where the biggest deductions are like New York, like California, they will pay, more. They will pay a lot more.
Now, who’s fault is that for a burdensome tax structure that would even further put certain states at a disadvantage for potential employers? It’s certainly not the Trump White House. Here’s a word for this part of the debate: federalism.
Here’s the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on September 28:
MSNBC’s Hardball
September 28, 2017
7:00 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Donald Trump ran for president promising to fight for the middle class against the elites as President Trump just released a tax plan that benefits the elites. In other words, the plan directly helps people like Donald Trump and his family. Today the President and top aides insisted that wasn't the case.
(....)
MATTHEWS: Well, the reality is the tax plan will help the wealthy in a number of ways. It lowers the top taxed individual rate from 39.6 down to 35 percent, about a five-point drop. It ends the estate tax, a benefit that will save the wealthiest families, those couples with over $11 million to leave their children. It ends the alternative minimum tax, which has prevented people like Donald Trump from using deductions to get out of paying taxes and while it does that for the wealthy, according to the Center on Budget and Politics: “The end result would likely be close to a wash for many low and moderate income families.” The New York Times reports while it would be “a potentially huge windfall for the wealthiest Americans, it would not directly benefit the bottom third of the population. As for the middle class, the benefits appear to be modest.” According to the 2016 exit polls, Donald Trump had his high margin of victory among middle class voters, those making between $50,000 and $100,000 a year. But, for those voters, this plan doesn't amount to anything.
(....)
MATTHEWS: It just seems to me that these big, sparkling diamonds of tax cuts are out there for people with a lot of diamonds. I mean, first of all, the estate tax. It means nothing to people that have less than $3 million to leave their kids. Why does he want to get rid of that? Why get rid of the alternative minimum tax that helps people like him or stops people like him escaping from like a bandit? And why bring down the top rate and bring up the bottom rate and still claim you're Robin Hood. He's the opposite of Robin Hood. He’s the Sheriff of Nottingham.
STEPHANIE RUHLE: If you're going to do all these things, make the argument that that is somehow going to help the economy. Instead, the President is straight up lying when he says he's not going to benefit from this. If he is worth $10 million — $10 billion like he says he is, don't you think that's going to be a massive win if there's no debt facts. That's going to be $4 million in his kids pockets.
MATTHEWS: Billions.
RUHLE: If you get rid of the AMT, the one year we saw a couple pages of his taxes, if you didn't have the amt, that could have helped him to the tune $31 million. So spare me the President telling us this isn't going to help him and Gary Cohn, who knows better, says, well, America doesn't care. They just care about their own pocketbook? You know what? They care about their own pocketbook and they care about leadership lying.
(....)
MATTHEWS: Well, there's a guy having to be Baghdad Bob tonight because there — the Gary Cohn knows it helps the President and you noticed he dodged every single question about how it helps the President. Here's the way it will benefit from his own tax plan he put out. First, ending the estate tax. According to NBC News, “The estate tax is currently 40 percent. Trump has claimed in the past he is worth $10 billion. If his children inherit that $10 billion they’d save $4 billion of that in taxes.” $4 billion. That's a good tax cut. Second, ending the alternative minimum tax. According to The New York Times: “The minimum tax has been unkind to Mr. Trump. In 2005, it forced him to pay $31 million in additional taxes” he would have voided. So, let me go to Andrew Ross Sorkin just to talk about Trump and his benefits. Why — psychologically — what is it about Republicans and no matter who they are, Trump or the most establishment character like Mitch McConnell, they’re obsessed with the estate tax. They call it the death tax. They are obsessed with building like Latin American plantations that go on for generation after generation of wealth. Why do they want to have wealth go on and on and on in their families? It seems to be a big obsession with them.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: It is the continuation of the aristocracy and it's coming to America if this were to pass and clearly, it would impact and benefit the Trump family. I would add one thing to your list, Chris, which has not been noted as much today, which is one part of the tax plan also includes what's called a pass through tax for corporations — personal corporations. Donald Trump has more many personal corporations. He would not be taxed at the 35% rate that everybody else is taxed at because most of the money is in such pass through corporations and pass through entities and therefore he would be taxed at 25 percent, a rate that he has offered up as being benefit to small businesses but, in fact, it's probably one of the greatest giveaways of this plan for the wealthy.
(....)
RUHLE: When think about what these pass throughs are, they include massive hedge funds, they include law firms and exactly, to Andrew's point, President Trump's businesses. So 90 percent of the pass throughs that exist in this country are held by the top one percent of the population. So spare me this argument that we're making it look like it's these little mom and pop shops. Uh-uh.
(....)
ROSS SORKIN: This is a battle — not just an economic battle, but a battle between red states and blue states. One of the things that people aren’t talking about enough is the state and local tax deduction which, if you're in a blue state where most people work —
MATTHEWS: New York.
SORKIN: — where the biggest deductions are like New York, like California, they will pay, more. They will pay a lot more. Even with the 35 percent rate, some of the wealthy, given all the issues we just talked, about, will pay more. If you're being paid $75,000 of household income in New York, you're going to end up paying more. This is — to some degree, you could talk about whether he's trying to soak the rich or not. This is about, in some way, soaking blue states relative to red states.
(....)
RUHLE: In general, Chris, people don't mind if I win, I don’t mind if you win too, but it is a massive insult to the American people to say, well, I'm going to win and I'm going to lie to you about it. So you watch Gary Cohn up there and he was floundering because, remember, this is the first time he's been back up on the podium, shining in the light in the House of Trump in weeks, because after Charlottesville, when Gary Cohn made a clear statement against the President, he was practically banished. You haven’t heard his name as a possible Fed Chair weeks in weeks. This is his moment back there. He doesn’t want to get offsides with the Trumps, but he also doesn’t want to tell the truth.
MATTHEWS: Well, he avoided not telling the truth, which is very clever today. He avoided not defending the fact that — not saying the president doesn't blame — doesn’t gain personally from the tax cut he's proposed, which is pretty preposterous. Anyway, Stephanie Ruhle —
RUHLE: Gary also said nobody buys a house who is interested in the mortgage deduction. Baloney, lots of people do.
MATTHEWS: Well, I’ve done it.
