What does the president owe, and to whom?
This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a tax return of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here. If the Trump presidency were a TV show, then the contents of his tax returns would be a foundational mystery of the plot, right up there with whether Gilligan will ever get off that island, who will take the Iron Throne and whatever the whole deal was with “Lost.” Now its shocking resolution in a late-season twist raises even more troubling mysteries. By now you have probably read some of the New York Times’s masterful reporting on the contents of President Donald Trump’s long-promised, never-delivered tax documents. They paint a vivid picture of someone who is either unusually bad at business or unusually good at avoiding taxes, or both, as Tim O’Brien — one of the few people who has actually seen any of Trump’s returns — notes. It takes something special to claim to be a billionaire but also only pay $750 in taxes in a full year. Trump’s supporters are relieved the documents explicitly lacked income sources such as “Doing Fraud for Russia” or whatever. But as Tim writes, they show the president of the United States is hundreds of millions of dollars in fast-maturing debt to still-mysterious lenders, some likely in foreign locales. This is an unprecedented national-security threat, Tim writes. And these returns likely understate just how deeply Trump is in the red. “What does the president owe, and to whom does he owe it?” will be a huge question as we head into the finale and a possible second season. Sure, memories are short these days, but come on.
