Painstakingly, by this point in the presidential campaign, you can all but expect Donald Trump to say or suggest something controversial at least once a week, and I’m being generous as once a week may well be selling Trump short. As I write this piece, a new comment or revelation could arise to replace his most recent blunder.
Regardless of whether you classify the substance of Trump’s comments and actions as honest mistakes or believe that these provocations are emblematic of his true essence, the ever-growing number of these awful remarks is startling. But if you dive beneath the surface, the implications of Trump’s comments are particularly disturbing.
To this point Trump has yet to release his tax returns; a bewildering move given the precedence and expectation that a presidential candidate should do so. It does, however, come as no surprise that Trump refuses to release his tax returns seeing as nearly every facet of the Trump campaign has defied the odds.
Nevertheless, intuitively, when people refuse to disclose something, it is human nature to suspect that they are doing so because they have something to hide. Therefore, once the New York Times discovered that Trump evaded paying federal income tax for 18 years, it served Hillary Clinton quite well to call Trump out during the debate this past Sunday by framing him as a cheater.
Albeit Clinton herself has little room to talk about cheating, given her ongoing email scandal, Trump’s reasoning for manipulating the American tax system is down-right head-scratching. To defend his reputation, Trump argued that using tax loopholes isn’t cheating because the system allows him to cheat. Trump then proceeded to paint the picture that politicians such as Clinton are to blame saying, “Why didn’t she do something about it?” His point is that because nobody fixed the loophole, it’s OK. In fact, Trump claims it is a smart move, or “genius,” as surrogate Rudy Guliani would say.
Pause for a moment, and think about that. Trump’s premise is that using a tax loophole reflects poorly on politicians rather than him because even though he cheated the tax system, it is OK to cheat because the system allows him to.
Now let’s apply this line of thought elsewhere. For instance, it’s OK for me to cheat on an exam because the teacher won’t reprimand me, or it is OK to steal a cookie from the cookie jar because I won’t get in trouble. Both of these examples highlight an ethical violation. They may be legal, but they are clearly actions that are frowned upon.
Furthermore, you would expect that if people violate an ethical code and are caught doing so, then they would apologize and take responsibility for their actions. Trump, however, has forgone any semblance of taking accountability by electing to blame his ploy as Clinton’s fault because she is a politician who is/was responsible for regulating the tax system during her time as a senator.
The blame game is nothing new, but passing the buck is something you wouldn’t usually expect out of the potential leader of our country. It is something you would expect on an elementary-school playground.
