Trump throws another Twitter temper tantrum steeped in hypocrisy and false claims.
Trump took to his Twitter account on Sunday to lash out at tax day protesters and to boast – once again – about his electoral win.
Reuters reports that:
Tens of thousands of people marched through midtown Manhattan and dozens of U.S. cities on Saturday to demand that President Donald Trump release his tax returns and to dispute his claim that the public does not care about the issue.
Organizers of “Tax March” in more than 150 cities across the country and beyond wanted to call attention to Trump’s refusal to disclose his tax history, as his White House predecessors have done for more than 40 years.
NBC News added that:
In New York, thousands brandished signs, with some that read “You got the birth certificate, show us your taxes” and “No Hidden Figures!” Groups chanted slogans like “You can’t build a wall, your hands are too small” and “This is what democracy looks like” as they marched up Sixth Avenue to Trump Tower.
In Washington, D.C., more than a thousand demonstrators stood in the shadow of the Capitol to insist that the president defend his American-first agenda by proving that he is not financially entangled with foreign governments.
Trump responded by tweeting about his election win and questioning why his taxes were still a concern:
I did what was an almost an impossible thing to do for a Republican-easily won the Electoral College! Now Tax Returns are brought up again?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2017
He followed that up with a tweet accusing rally participants of being “paid.”
Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday. The election is over!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2017
NBC News noted that Trump’s “unsubstantiated claim” that protesters against his administration were “paid” “became popular in some right-wing circles in the build up to the 2016 presidential election.”
Trump tweeted that paid protesters were unfairly demonstrating his election on November 10, 2016:
Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016
And Trump made similar claims regarding protesters against his first immigration order in February, tweeting: “Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017
NBC News also pointed out that hypocritically, “Trump himself used paid actors to pose as rally attendees during his campaign.
Vanity Fair offered the following background in January 2017.
When Trump first announced that he was running for president in June of 2015, Trump’s campaign reportedly paid actors $50 apiece to cheer him on. Trump’s campaign manager at the time, Corey Lewandowski, denied that the campaign had hired warm bodies to boost the event’s audience, telling Business Insider, “You know Donald Trump. There is nobody who believes that when Donald Trump goes somewhere he does not generate the biggest, largest, and most rambunctious crowds on the planet. It’s just not true, unequivocally. The Donald Trump campaign and Donald Trump did not pay anybody to attend his announcement.”
In July 2015 the American Democracy Legal Fund filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, claiming that the Trump campaign had violated reporting provision of the Federal Campaign Act 0f 1971 by failing to disclose payment to those actors.
As Vanity Fair continued, “the commission chose to close its case on the matter—but not because it found the Trump campaign totally innocent.”
As the commission notes in a March report from its general counsel—which was made public Thursday—Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. did admit that it paid Gotham Government Relations $12,000 on October 8. Gotham, in turn, told the commission that it had hired a subcontractor called Extra Mile “to provide administrative support at Trump’s announcement.”
That support being the paid actors.
Regarding the call for his tax returns, NBC News reports that: “Trump and his administration have repeatedly dismissed calls for him to release his taxes, first claiming he couldn’t because he was being audited, then saying the issue was more of interest to journalists and liberal politicians,” however, “a poll from the Pew Research Center in January found that more than two-thirds of all Americans believe the president has an obligation to release his tax returns.”
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