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NYT: Trump Paid Just $750 in Federal taxes in 2016, 2017; Former Trump Campaign Manager Hospitalized after Suicide Attempt. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired September 28, 2020 - 06:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: A bombshell "New York Times" report says Donald Trump didn't pay any federal income taxes for 10 out of 15 years before his election.

[05:59:12]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The story is a total fake. It's totally fake news.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This report is a devastating picture of a president who is bleeding financially and depending on the presidency to prop him up financially.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Globally, coronavirus deaths are approaching 1 million. Dr. Fauci cautions we are still in the first wave of the coronavirus and has warned infection rates will likely rise.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The virus is not going away, so we're not turning the corner. We're not on the final turn.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Monday, September 28, 6 a.m. here in New York.

Breaking overnight, we now know what is in President Trump's taxes. The long-awaited mystery is over this morning.

"The New York Times" obtained two decades' worth of Donald Trump's tax records. Here's the headline: "President's Taxes Chart Chronic Losses, Audit Battle and Income Tax Avoidance."

"The Times" reports that President Trump has paid no tax -- no income tax for years, using a loophole that allowed him to deduct massive losses from bad business decisions.

In 2016 and 2017, Mr. Trump paid just $750 in federal taxes. Seven hundred and fifty dollars. That includes his first year as president. The average American in 2017 paid 16 times more than the self- proclaimed billionaire in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden paid a lot more. He paid more than $3.7 million more than Mr. Trump in his joint filing.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. I made my own graphic to help illustrate the situation here.

CAMEROTA: That is sophisticated.

BERMAN: Well, but that's the point! I think that's why this story is so big, because anyone can understand this.

CAMEROTA: That fits on one page.

BERMAN: This fits on one page. This is what the president reportedly paid in federal income taxes his first two years in office. I can understand this. I think a lot of voters can understand this.

There's another number, too. "The Times" also says the president has more than $420 million on loans due in the next few years. That's a lot of money. This is a lot of money. And it raises the question if the presidency is some kind of financial protection plan.

There's other major news this morning. We might be turning a corner or at a turning point in the coronavirus pandemic, a decided turn for the worse. This morning, 21 states are seeing a rise in cases. You can see it on the map here.

And there's one chart I want you to pay attention to this morning. This is the seven-day moving average, I think we have, of hospitalizations. All right, look at this chart. It's been dropping since the beginning of July. It was dropping, I should say, since the beginning of July. Now it's leveled off and actually looks like it is beginning to rise again. And if there's one thing we've seen, it's that increased hospitalizations invariably lead to increased death.

So we have a lot to get to this morning. First, we're going to start with this major new report. Joe Johns live at the White House. And Joe, as Alisyn I think correctly said this morning, we now know, based on "The New York Times, what's in the president's taxes.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: President Trump has been keeping his taxes secret for years, but now, just days before the first presidential election, "The New York Times" has published the most specific account of the president's finances that we've seen so far. And with 36 days to go until the presidential election, this is sure to become part of the national political conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS (voice-over): Just two days before the first presidential debate, a new report revealing some of the information President Trump's worked hardest to hide. His tax returns.

A "New York Times" investigation says Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. Soon after the report published, the president called it fake news, saying he's paid a lot of taxes.

TRUMP: Well, first of all, I paid a lot, and I paid a lot of state income taxes, too. The New York state charges a lot, and I paid a lot of money at state. It will all be revealed. It's going to come out.

JOHNS: But "The Times" reports the president has been fighting with the IRS for years over a nearly $73 million tax refund he claimed. If he loses that battle, it could cost him over $100 million.

TRUMP: They're doing their assessment. We've been negotiating for a long time. Things get settled, like in the IRS, but right now when you're under audit, you don't do it.

JOHNS: Despite the president's claim, tax information can be made public, even if he's under audit.

"The Times" also says Trump paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the 15 years before he became president, because he reported losing much more money than he made.

This, another detail in "The Times" investigation painting a damning portrait of Trump's success as a businessman, a selling point he used to rally supporters on the campaign trail.

Adding to that, "The Times" reported last year that, based on tax forms from 1985 to 1994, he "lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer."

The report also reveals the president has spent nearly all of the $427 million he made on the TV show "The Apprentice" to help fund his other businesses and owes more than $300 million in loans that he's personally responsible for over the next four years.

According to The Times, Trump used his status as president to attract business to his private properties, like his hotels and golf courses, to help offset his financial problems, creating direct conflicts of interest.

Trump also writing off massive deductions, including more than $70,000 for hairstyling expenses, and hundreds of thousands in consulting fees for the Trump Organization that match payments his daughter, Ivanka, received from a consulting company she co-owned.

[06:05:15]

Joe Biden's campaign says "The Times" report is another example of the big contrast between Trump and the Democratic nominee.

KATE BEDINGFIELD, BIDEN DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER: It's the latest reminder how clear the choice is here in this race between Park Avenue and Scranton. You have, in Donald Trump, a president who spends his time thinking about how he can work his way out of paying taxes.

With Joe Biden, you have somebody who has a completely different perspective on what it means to be a working family in this country.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: A lawyer for the Trump Organization told "The Times" that most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate. But this report is highly difficult for the president to dismiss and almost certain to become part of the debate tomorrow night.

CAMEROTA: Yes, Joe --

JOHNS: Alisyn, back to you.

CAMEROTA: -- thank you very much. I mean, the way you know it's true is he's calling it fake news. That's how you know. Because usually he doubles down and says, so what? But this time he's saying something different.

Joining us this morning, we have CNN political correspondent Abby Phillip. Also with us, CNN global affairs analyst Susan Glasser. She's a staff writer at "The New Yorker" and the co-author of the new book, "The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker," which comes out tomorrow. But somehow, John Berman already has a copy. Look at that!

BERMAN: I haven't opened it yet. It's not official.

CAMEROTA: Nobody is a better book P.R. publicist than John Berman.

Susan, let me -- let me start with you on that note. There are so many jaw-dropping paragraphs in this "New York Times" -- in this "New York Times" piece. What a tour de force of reporting. But I think that the headline is the president, on the years that he has paid taxes, which are few and far between, he paid $750. What jumps out at you?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, Alisyn, it is breathtaking.

First of all, that it took so long for us to find this information out about the president. I would note that he is the only president since the Nixon era to refuse to release his tax returns in advance of the 2016 and now the 2020 campaign. And you can see the reason why. This would have been very likely a political death blow, had it been released four years ago, and he might never have become president, because he paid $750 while he was president, zero dollars, I believe, for ten of the previous 15 years. That's just almost a political death blow, really.

Now very little has moved his -- his fan base, his core of support over the last few years of impeachment, every kind of allegation. So you know, you have to be wary of predicting what the political consequences are, but not only is it before the first debate on Tuesday, you already see Democrats using this to emphasize a message of, essentially, economic populism that they were already using.

You know, the average taxpayer pays thousands of dollars more, even working people -- nurses, construction workers, schoolteachers. It's just -- it's breathtaking! I mean, a part-time immigrant is likely -- illegal immigrants are likely to have spent more on federal taxes than the president of the United States. So the political damage is potentially extremely high.

Also, you have a president who is really at risk in a national security sense, very vulnerable to blackmail. He's someone who is obviously consumed by not being portrayed as the loser that "The New York Times" portrays him as, in terms of the business.

BERMAN: I wrote down -- The reason I wrote down these numbers, Abby, is because I think they're really easy to understand. And that's what's different about this story. It's a lot of words in "The New York Times," but it's very simple to understand.

This is what the president paid in taxes, according to "The Times," the first two years he was in office: $750. This is what the average American pays in taxes. The average tax filer pays $12,000, right, in personal income taxes. That's easy to understand, which to me is why this is a problematic story for the president this morning.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think it is. I mean, this is, in large part, what a lot of people expected. You know, four years ago, the whole thing that Hillary Clinton would -- would kind of come out with during the campaign was to say that Donald Trump was probably hiding his tax returns because he didn't pay any. It turns out that was absolutely correct. He didn't really pay any taxes, you know, whether you include the years he paid zero or the years that he paid $750, which is virtually nothing for someone of his wealth.

But I do think that -- that, as Susan said, for the purposes of this election, one of the new pieces of information that's particularly important are these hundreds of millions of dollars in debts that are coming due now, virtually, for President Trump. And we don't know who they are -- who they are owed to. I do think --

[06:10:04]

BERMAN: I made a graphic for that, too. Just so -- just so people know.

PHILLIP: Right.

BIDEN: Four hundred and twenty-one million dollars in loans due over the next years.

PHILLIP: That is such a large sum of money that it is hard to wrap your head around what that even means, but it is an exorbitant amount of money. And if you are a private citizen, and you were trying to get a job in the federal government, and you were trying to get a security clearance in the federal government, and you had that much debt or you had even a fraction of that much debt in relation to your wealth, you might not get that clearance, because you would be deemed potentially a security risk.

And so for the president, especially as we go into this period where they're going to be in a debate setting, the question for him is, who is he owing? Who is that money owed to? And what does it mean that he's tried to hide it for the last four years? I think that is probably one of the more significant things, in

addition to the fact that more than -- the reason he is under audit from the IRS is because he's trying to hold onto a more than $70 million tax refund. That is one of the largest sums that you can imagine that the IRS could send back to a person in this country. So he has a lot of explaining to do when it comes to those incredible numbers, really.

CAMEROTA: Susan, it just puts so much in stark relief. So much is now answered.

I mean, not only is he not paying into the social fabric of the country, not only is he not contributing in any way to the pocketbook of the country, that everybody else has to, I mean, in terms of everything from the defense budget to paying down the national debt that he's running up, it also explains the decisions that he's made with coronavirus.

He has to downplay it, so that his hotels still get public -- you know, still work, that people still travel on airlines, that the economy still runs, that the stock market is still good. It explains the personal interest in lying about the coronavirus.

GLASSER: Well, Alisyn, I think you're right to highlight a striking fact of Trump's presidency, which, you know, when the history of all of this craziness is written, right, one striking aspect is the fact that the president of the United States seems to often act in his personal interest rather than in the national interest. And especially now in a national crisis that has had even deadly and devastating effects.

Trump's disdain for the IRS is something that leaps out at me. I'm thinking of a passage in Michael Cohen, his former fixer, who you know, then went on to jail, came out with a book that, actually, the Trump administration has tried to suppress. And he talks about a scene where Trump, basically, has all this disdain for the IRS. And he's like, Can you imagine them giving a bleeping, you know, millions of dollar refund to me? What losers they are.

And again, when somebody tells you they have something to hide, believe them. That's part of the moral of the story here, is that it turns out that Donald Trump wasn't just, you know, withholding his tax returns from the American people on a point of principle, but because he had something to hide.

And again, this is unbelievable information not to have been presented to the American people four years ago, when he ran for president, not to be presented now, in 2020. It's just -- it's a breathtaking disclosure of a president of the United States who literally, literally, appears to be covering up serious potential wrongdoing from the American people.

And, you know, will it have a political impact? People have become wary of predicting it, because it seems that nothing can dissuade his core of support. But you've got to imagine that every day working people in key battleground states are going to be astonished that Donald Trump is paying less in taxes than they are. How can that not make them concerned about re-electing him?

BERMAN: Abby Phillip, Susan Glasser. Susan, we will have you back on this week to talk about your new book. Super excited for the publishing of that. Thank you both.

We do have breaking news we want to get to. President Trump's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, is hospitalized this morning, after his wife reported he was armed and threatening suicide at their Florida home.

CNN's Randi Kaye is live at the hospital in Ft. Lauderdale with the latest on Brad Parscale's situation -- Randi.

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

Yes, we know that he is getting some treatment here this morning in Ft. Lauderdale at the Broward Health Medical Center. This all started at 4 p.m. yesterday when his wife apparently called police. She was very concerned about him.

Police responded to reports of a suicide attempt. She said that he had been barricaded inside the home with multiple weapons. She was worried that he was going to harm himself, so police arrived. They did everything right, apparently. We know how this could have ended.

He negotiated with the police. They negotiated his exit from the residence. They developed some type of report with him and just shortly after the SWAT team arrived, he did surrender.

We know that he's being held here under the Baker Act, which is a state law here in the state of Florida that allows for involuntary temporary commitment. So he's being treated here for -- for a while. He's being held under that Baker Law.

[06:15:09]

Meanwhile, just a little bit about his background. He was the campaign manager for the Trump campaign until July, when he was demoted. He was now in charge of digital strategy, still a senior adviser.

But he was also the one who had orchestrated that very controversial Tulsa rally for the president, where there were not only a lot of empty seats, which the president wasn't very happy about, but also not a lot of social distancing, not a lot of people wearing masks. We also know that, following that rally, a short time later, Herman Cain, the former presidential candidate, passed away from the coronavirus. Unclear where he picked that up.

But I can also tell you that Jim -- Tim Murtaugh, the campaign communications manager, did release a statement to CNN about this. He said that "Brad Parscale is a member of our family. We all love him. We are ready to support him and his family in any way possible."

So again, we don't know why this happened, what his mental state was, but certainly, a very, very difficult time for Brad Parscale, his wife, and the family -- Alisyn. CAMEROTA: Thank you, Randi. Obviously, we, too, hope that he gets the support that he needs right now. Thank you very much.

Breaking news. California's wine country struggling with raging wildfires. Two new wildfires are spreading, burning homes and threatening thousands of structures. Overnight, a mandatory evacuation order is in effect for thousands of people in parts of Napa and Sonoma counties. One hospital has already moved its patients.

More than 3.6 million acres have burned this year in California. Twenty-five major fires are currently active in the state, which has already suffered more than 8,100 wildfires this year.

OK, new revelations about the president's finances. We now know what's in President Trump's taxes. The long wait is over. The mystery is solved. "The New York Times" got two decades' worth of the president's taxes. Wait until you hear how much he pays a year for his hairdo. Pays a year for his hairdo.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:21:15]

BERMAN: All right. The breaking news this morning, Alisyn, you sum it up in one line?

CAMEROTA: We now have the president's taxes. We know what's in them.

BERMAN: All right. This is a "New York Times" front-page story, which lays out in detail exactly what the president has paid in taxes over years. And I built a complicated graphic so we can all understand what the president paid his first two years in office: $750. Seven hundred and fifty dollars. The self-proclaimed billionaire paid $750 in federal income taxes his first two years in office, according to "The Times."

Joining us now is Trump biographer Tim O'Brien. He has seen the president's taxes, one of the few people on earth who has seen versions of the president's taxes.

Trump sued O'Brien in 2006 after Tim wrote a book, "Trump Nation," saying that the self-proclaimed billionaire was worth no more than $250 million. The suit was later dismissed.

Tim, because you know more than the rest of us about this, although I know you can't talk about the specifics of what you've seen, we want to know your top line on this story. And you just published your own story, saying, these taxes show that the president is a national security risk. Why?

TIM O'BRIEN, TRUMP BIOGRAPHER: Well, I think, John, you know, first and foremost, I think the broad contours of what "The Times" has puts numeric clothing on things we've known for a bad time. That he's a bad businessman, that he routinely runs losses in his business, that he's a serial bankruptcy artist, and -- and that he gorges on debt. It puts new clothing on some other very important issues around how much taxes he pays, where his current indebtedness might lead, and I think what it means for policy making, from the Oval Office.

And I think two of the very salient things that -- that pop out at at me from this initially is, yes, I think that Donald Trump is a national security threat. Someone who's -- who's in businesses that are being ravaged right now by the coronavirus pandemic, putting his business under stress, and also has a lot of debt that he'll either need a financial rescue for or he'll be forced to fail to sell some of what he has, is somebody who's a potential mark for foreign interests or other interests that want to get to the president.

Secondarily, I think the other takeaway out of this, a president who pays zero in taxes in some years, pays $750 in each of his first two years, only $750 in taxes, and then engineers the massive tax cut that benefits the most affluent Americans in the country and corporate America, but doesn't take people like him to account for paying their fair share. I think it's thrown into even higher relief when we learn the president himself is paying no taxes at all.

CAMEROTA: Just to put a final point on what you're saying, Tim. Since he's been president, he had said he would not do foreign deals. So that he was not vulnerable to exactly what you're talking about. However, these taxes reveal, that's not true. He has.

He has taken money from the Philippines, from Turkey, places with, obviously, leaders whose values Americans don't agree with. And he has paid some of these governments more than the U.S. So he has paid more than to Panama and the Philippines and India than he did to the U.S. government.

O'BRIEN: He paid more to Stormy Daniels than he paid to the U.S. government.

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: He took to Twitter eight years ago to criticize Barack Obama for only paying, I think, around $160,000 in taxes or so, "only paying."

One, he's shameless, but two, yes, the fact that Donald Trump relies on foreign holdings, overseas holdings, to buttress his finances to the extent that he does is a national security problem.

[06:25:07]

The United States has a very complex diplomatic dance with Turkey. The fact that Trump draws the kind of income he does from Turkey inevitably complicates how anyone should think about his policies toward the Erdogan regime.

Russia has hung out there throughout his entire presidency as an issue that every corner of America has talked about and been concerned about. These tax returns don't answer that question, but it makes the importance of it even more legitimate. You can't have a president in the Oval Office who's not transparent about his finances, and is also under financial duress and is dependent -- dependent on the kindness of strangers to survive financially. BERMAN: You know, and we also now have new information about his hair,

which is clearly a very sophisticated, complicated operation. My graphics department, I had a backlog, so I wasn't able to write this one down.

CAMEROTA: I'll write it.

BERMAN: But $70,000. He wrote off $70,000 in expenses related to his --

CAMEROTA: Hairstyling.

BERMAN: -- hairstyling as a business expense.

CAMEROTA: My graphics aren't as good.

BERMAN: Again, Tim, if you were to categorize -- the reason I had $750 is I think people can understand that. That is easy to understand, how much that is. I think people can also understand how much they pay for a haircut, and $70,000 seems high.

O'BRIEN: Well, you -- John, you and Alisyn both have way better hair than I do. I can tell you, I would never need to pay anywhere close to 70,000 on my hair, but I doubt that either of you would, either.

And -- and beyond the sort of tragic, comic tawdriness of this, the larger thing that's going on in these expenses that have been itemized is Trump's questionable use of tax deductions to reduce his -- and business expenses to reduce his tax liabilities.

He, according to the documents "The Times" had, he paid lavish consulting fees to Ivanka Trump at a time when she was already working for the Trump Organization. They deducted those as a business expense.

They have residences outside of New York City that they categorize as businesses, but the children talk about as second family homes. I think there is a -- a buffet of accounting and -- and tax issues that the federal government and state and local government are going to be scrutinizing more deeply now in the wake of these returns coming out.

CAMEROTA: But won't his supporters just say, Hey, good on him. If he can -- if he can get the best of those dummies over at the IRS, where he is basically charging the American people for the tremendously bad business decisions he made decades ago, where he's now just carrying the money from that forward, isn't that the IRS' problem?

O'BRIEN: Well, it's all of our problems. I mean, you know, income inequality in this country is a massive problem. The fact that someone who claims he's worth billions of dollars -- Donald Trump is not worth $10 billion, although he's always said he was. But someone who is clearly comfortably wealthy and is paying no taxes at all is a social, political, and economic problem.

Whether or not that translates into a direct political problem for him right now, I'm not sure. You know, the -- Trump's critics have a very baked-in view of him. Trump's supporters have a very baked-in view of him.

But I think in the swing states and among independent voters, where this election is really going to be won and lost, issues like this matter. Donald Trump said, I'm going to go to Washington and look out for the little guy. And lo and behold, he was laughing all the way to the bank, and he's laughing at them. And I think they need to look at these numbers and really question their loyalty to him.

BERMAN: Tim O'Brien, thank you so much for being with us, and thank you also for pointing out there are actual genuine legal questions here that are unresolved. One of them is the consulting payments allegedly made to his children. One of them is the estate in Westchester, which he may have mischaracterized. And then there's this matter of the $70 million refund that, according to "The Times," is still under audit. Those are genuine unresolved legal questions now.

Tim O'Brien, thanks so much for being with us.

O'BRIEN: Thank you.

BERMAN: All right, the pandemic. There are concerns, growing concerns in New York about an alarming rate of new cases in some neighborhoods. We'll explain what's happening, next.

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