Thursday Night Revealed Four Big Avenues of Attack on Trump
Last night's debate may not be decisive. But it did give the two major non-Trump candidates at least four fruitful avenues of attack on the front-runner. 1. Trump's Audits. "As far as my return, I want to file it, except for many years, I've been audited every year. Twelve years or something like that. Every year they audit me, audit me, audit me." After the debate, in an interview with CNN, he added, "But the one problem I have is that I'm always audited by the IRS, which I think is very unfair. I don't know, maybe because of religion, maybe because I'm doing something else, maybe because I'm doing this, although this is just recently. Well maybe because of the fact that I'm a strong Christian, and I feel strongly about it. And maybe there's a bias." How is it that Trump has never mentioned the fact that he's being audited by the Internal Revenue Service every year for twelve years before? How is it that Mr. "Two Corinthians" never bothered to mention that he believes he's being targeted -- since before the Obama administration! -- by the IRS over his religious beliefs? And last night he started hedging on whether he'll be able to release his returns until this audit is complete. One simple theory as to what's going on, stemming from a dismissed Trump libel lawsuit: the mogul's net worth is way less than he's been saying. Or maybe Trump is just a pathological liar. 2. Trump University. The background: Never licensed as a school, Trump University was in reality a series of real estate workshops in hotel ballrooms around the country, not unlike many other for-profit self-help or motivational seminars. Though short-lived, it remains a thorn in Trump's side nearly five years after its operations ceased: In three pending lawsuits, including one in which the New York attorney general is seeking $40 million in restitution, former students allege that the enterprise bilked them out of their money with misleading advertisements. Instead of a fast route to easy money, these Trump University students say they found generic seminars led by salesmen who pressured them to invest more cash in additional courses. The students say they didn't learn Trump's secrets and never received the one-on-one guidance they expected. Here's something that particularly emits an odor: But the first major shot at Trump University came from Texas in January 2010. That's when Abbott's assistant attorney general in the Consumer Protection and Public Health Division, Rick Berlin, began a probe of whether the operation violated Texas' Deceptive Trade Practices Consumer Protection Act. In a "civil investigative demand" mailed to university corporate offices at Trump's 40 Wall Street address, Abbott's office sought financial records; promotional and advertising material, such as that used to promote Trump University seminars in Texas; talking points and sales scripts used by seminar leaders to encourage people to purchase the paid programs; and names of all Texans who "purchased your workshop or mentoring program" from January 2008 to the present. Rather than respond and turn over the requested documents, Trump University agreed to cease doing business in Texas. Later that year, Trump University stopped operations altogether. If everything's on the up-and-up, why do you run out of town at the first inquiry from law enforcement? If the accusations about Trump University are true, Trump isn't he big man who stands up for the little guy; he's the fat-cat who plays the little guy for a sucker. 3. The guy on the stage claiming to be toughest on illegal immigration is the only guy on stage who's hired illegal immigrants. . . . a long-forgotten, long-fought lawsuit contending Trump used illegal immigrants for the demolition work that preceded the construction of Trump Tower. Eighteen years ago, Wojciech Kozak helped build Trump Tower, the skyscraper jewel in Donald J. Trump's real-estate empire. Today, Mr. Kozak recalls that time with nightmare memories of backbreaking 12-hour shifts and of being cheated with 200 other undocumented Polish immigrants out of meager wages and fringe benefits. "'We worked in horrid, terrible conditions," Mr. Kozak said of the six months he spent in 1980 wielding a sledgehammer and a blowtorch in demolishing the Bonwit Teller Building on Fifth Avenue to make way for Trump Tower. "We were frightened illegal immigrants and did not know enough about our rights." Trump insisted he never knew the workers were in the country illegally. The case was finally settled in 1999 and then sealed. Both sides described the resolution as "agreeable." If Rubio and Cruz are smart, they'll start pointing out that this isn't ancient history; Trump is still using illegal immigrants on his hotel project in Washington, D.C.: "It's something ironic," said Ivan Arellano, 29, who is from Mexico and obtained legal status through marriage. He now works as a mason laying the stonework for the lobby floor and walls of what will become the Trump International Hotel. "The majority of us are Hispanics, many who came illegally," Arellano said in Spanish. "And we're all here working very hard to build a better life for our families." Interviews with about 15 laborers helping renovate the Old Post Office Pavilion revealed that many of them had crossed the U.S-Mexico border illegally before they eventually settled in the Washington region to build new lives. This goes to credibility. Trump denounces illegal immigration in the abstract but finds it convenient and cheap when he needs work done. 4. Trump claims he can't find Americans willing to do the work. If you grind your teeth every time you hear someone like Karl Rove use the phrase, "jobs Americans won't do," why would you give Donald Trump a pass? But the attacks are beginning to pile up, with a New York Times story this week saying Mr. Trump's Florida country club has hired hundreds of foreign seasonal workers, rejecting applications from Americans. Mr. Trump said his Mar-a-Lago Club has no choice but to go to foreign workers, saying he can't find enough Americans willing to work the hot season. "Everybody agrees with me on that. They were part-time jobs," he said. "Otherwise we might as well have just closed the doors." Really? Florida has about a half million unemployed people right now. That figure has come down about 60,000 in the past year, but you're telling me Trump couldn't find a single Floridian to do this work? The 2016 Election Is about Work and the Value of Workers From a great essay by our old friend, Mark Hemingway: But if there's another piece of advice here that absolutely disqualifies [Hillary] Clinton for the presidency, it's "do what you love." The truth is, that is simply not an option for most people. When it's 39 degrees and raining in February, do you think the guy who picks up your trash is staring at your acrid, bacteria-laden refuse at 6 a.m. and saying, "Thank God, I love what I do"? Indeed, it is precisely this cultural disconnect about the value of work that explains why there's an open revolt in both parties and the future seems so uncertain. If any one issue defines this election, it's economic stagnation. Many Trump supporters in the GOP feel left behind by the twenty-first-century economy. They're angry about it, because our "follow your bliss" culture doesn't begin to appreciate coal miners or people who work in brake disc factories, even as it obsessively venerates empty celebrity and people like social media executives and hedge fund managers who are filthy rich in spite of the fact their contributions to society aren't very tangible. Hillary Clinton's "do what you love" advice reminded me of Chelsea Clinton's comment: I've tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents. I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn't. That wasn't the metric of success that I wanted in my life. Oh, shut up. You know who can't bring themselves to care about money? Phenomenally wealthy people who will never have to work a day in their lives. Whether you're just trying to make enough money to have food for the week, or you're sweating your kids' college educations and whether you'll be able to afford retirement, those of us who "care" about money in the sense that we're worried if we'll have enough do so because we have to, Chelsea. It's not greed. It's not selfishness. It's not misplaced values. Really, the Clintons are insufferable. ADDENDA: On this week's pop-culture podcast, a discussion of the Oscars and how Hollywood prefers to blame American society for its own racial inequalities and disputes; true crime television and the nightmare of taxpayer-funded serial killers; Facebook and America's "Envy Culture"; how Millennial whining can spur valuable life lessons, and why we expect to see people assaulting each other over access to electrical sockets at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference.  | 
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