New York Times PROVES Trump is a Billionaire!

Donald Trump reported $52.9M in interest income in 89. The number is BIG, according to IRS data we examined. We don't know what Trump owned that could produce this type of $. The answer is on schedules we don’t have & underscores the importance of seeing Trump’s full tax return

— Susanne Craig (@susannecraig) May 7, 2019

See?

“Every year from 1985 through 1994, Donald J. Trump reported a negative adjusted gross income on his tax returns. That number grew as new losses were combined with those from prior years,” the newspaper noted. “The 10-year total: $1.17 billion in losses.”

Just in the wrong direction.

And what is wrong with a system that keeps this man afloat and lets him fail upwards into the White House?  Do we want to face that question?  Or would we rather demand the Democrats impeach Trump so Mitch McConnell can declare the Senate too busy to take up the issue?  Or just generally campaign on what a grand waste of time it is throughout 2020?   Does Trump challenge our Constitutional system?  Or does he call into question the fundamentals of the system we all pledge our fealty and labor to?

Because this is the vaunted expert of deal-making who somehow has managed not to wind up selling pencils on a street corner:

“But in the granular detail of tax results, it gives a precise accounting of the president’s financial failures and of the constantly shifting focus that would characterize his decades in business,” the report said.

“Year after year Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual taxpayer. In just two years, he lost more than double the next biggest loser in this country,” [CNN's Erin] Burnett said.

“That’s right. There’s a database the IRS compiles of high-income earners like Mr. Trump. Most of them are business owners like him. They show revenue from businesses on their tax returns. Year after year in this cycle he is on the outer limits of people who are recording those kinds of losses. Then rolls it over into the next year. He gets this massive loss for the decade of over a billion dollars,” New York Times reporter Russ Buettner said.

“He’s literally the biggest loser,” Burnett added. “There’s quite an irony there. This is something that isn’t normal.”

I remember (I've mentioned it before) a story from the '60's, in a science fiction anthology, about a man who arrives at work to be informed he's been summoned to "The Top."  It takes him most of the short story to navigate the bureaucracy and elevators it takes to make the trip, proof of how important it is "up there" because it is protected by so many layers, keeping it far from "ordinary people."  When he gets there, the elevator opens on a vast, empty room, covered in dust, with windows looking out on a wasteland.  This is from memory, mind you.  As I age, it becomes a more and more compelling metaphor about the systems we pledge our sacred honor and our sacred trust to devote our lives and energies to; and nothing exposes the whole thing for a fraud and a hollow shell than the news that Donald Trump is a "negative" billionaire, kept afloat by a system the rest of us kill ourselves to keep running for the sake of people like him, and his enablers.

We don't need them; but boy, do they need us.  And when we get to the top, and find it lifeless, empty, and looking out on a blasted heath; who do we hold accountable then?