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President Donald Trump, who has all but ruled out disclosing his tax information, claimed on Sunday that he could release his tax returns soon, following the completion of a routine IRS audit.

It could happen soon. I dont know, he said in an interview on CBS Face the Nation. I think its pretty routine, to be honest with you. But then Ill make a decision.

Last week, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin declared that Trump has no intention of releasing his tax returns, which he repeatedly promised to do while running for president but falsely claimed that he couldnt because hes being audited.

The IRS has said that nothing prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information, including being audited.

In avoiding a basic practice of transparency for elected officials, Trump became the first president in four decades to not disclose his tax filings, leaving many unanswered questions about his finances and business practices.

When Mnuchin last week unveiled the Trump administrations tax plan, which would benefit wealthy people like Trump, it renewed calls for the president to unveil his tax information.

On Sunday, Trump refuted his treasury secretary, claiming that he might release his tax returns and bragged about the supposed size of them.

Well, I never spoke to him about it. Honestly, hes never asked me about it, Trump said of Mnuchin. I said, number one, Im under audit. Right now, Im under audit. After the audit is complete. Its a routine audit, but I have a very big tax return. Youve seen the pictures. My tax return is probably higher than that from the floor. When you look at other peoples tax return, even other wealthy people, their tax return is this big. My tax return is this high.

Trump said that its very unfair that he was being audited.

I have been under audit almost, like, since I became famous, OK? he said.

In defending his decision to not release his taxes, Trump and his administration have repeatedly argued that the matter is settled because he won the election without having released them.

Earlier this month, press secretary Sean Spicer also brought out the audit excusein declaring that Trump would not release his taxes this year. But like Trump, he did not rule it out completely,when asked if it was safe to say that the president will not release his tax returns at all.

Well have to get back to you on that, Spicer said.

Read the rest here:
Donald Trump Keeps Up Charade That He Might Release His Tax Returns - Huffington Post

Ongoing opposition to Donald J. Trumps presidency continues a trend that began during the election campaign: a singular focus on the man and his foibles, as if those who supported him did not get enough of the hashing and rehashing of those same weaknesses before Election Day. Many of us in the opposition are still acting surprised that he is such a consummate con artist, liar, bloviator, narcissist and so on, in office as he was on the campaign trail.

What were we supposed to expect? That Trump was only lying to get into office and would stop doing so out of respect for the majesty of the presidency? That his narcissism would be attenuated somehow by the demands of the office? That he would suddenly become a ratiocinative person just because he is now president? That his racism would evaporate because, somehow, the presidency is a cure for that disorder?

Trumps triumph has little to do with the man himself, whatever his strengths and weaknesses or even the genius of his campaign strategies. It has more to do with where the nation is, where we its people or at least a salient segment of us are, and the state of our public life and discourse and the institutions that provide the vessels in which they unfold. Our vituperations against Trump will not deny him a second term if those fundamentals do not change significantly. Of course, if we are lucky, the man will self-destruct. Dont count on it.

Ours is a degraded country epitomized in a degraded electorate, degraded media and degraded institutions political, educational and bureaucratic.

We still have a two-party system, but in name only. The dominant Republican party is in thrall to a membership that no longer can distinguish between truth and falsehood and is ever eager to dismiss that distinction when confronted by or caught out in blatant falsehoods. The partys leadership is so hell-bent on power and the actuation of its destructive ideology that it unapologetically deploys scorched-earth practices, in or out of power. Republicans have transmuted into a tribe marked by unanimity of opinion or, failing that, ideological purity that brooks no dissent or makes its transaction costs prohibitive; absolutely petrified of the vengeance of a followership it has nurtured to this level of destructive baying for blood; unmindful of, if not actively willing to abet, the damages it does to the most important of our time-honored institutions and practices.

Improving on their bad behavior in 1996, when the Republican leadership stayed away from the funeral for Secretary of Transportation Ron Brown who had died in the service of his country not one member of the congressional GOP broke ranks, for eight years, in their undisguised war on the first black person to be president of this country. This shameful display was consummated by the unprecedented refusal even to consider Merrick Garland, a distinguished jurist of the second-highest court in the land, in order to force the Supreme Court to operate short-handed either indefinitely or until they could secure the open seat for their tribe. When they did, they handed the seat to a judicial hack peddling the snake oil of constitutional originalism, the same doctrine that had doomed Robert Borks nomination back in 1987. A seat on our Supreme Court has become a feudal preferment.

Our current fulminations do not address the electorate that voted Donald Trump into office. If they elected him once, flaws and all, why would they not elect him again? If they dont, it will not be because they have found him to be a singularly flawed person. Focusing on and highlighting Trumps failings has the ironic effect of burnishing his credentials among his followers. Remember, this is exactly how his opponents or, as his supporters call them, the liberal elites, the coddlers of criminals, the embracers of illegal aliens and so forth are expected to view him.

This is where we need to confront the most significant degradation that our country has undergone in the last 30 years; a period and a process inaugurated by the election of Ronald Reagan.

During the Reagan years we made the transition to substituting style for substance; that was when communicating became more important than what was being communicated; when the war on thinking became a framing trope of our public life; when we went from an industrial power with a dominant manufacturing economy to a financial one in which McMoney became king, and then transmuted again into a service economy. To boot, we became the worlds No. 1 debtor nation. That was when running for public office stopped being about what candidates would do for us and became denominated by what candidates would do to certain of us. That was when we found a way in public discourse to elide the strictures of the civil rights movements outcomes by making an art form of dog whistles. That was when invoking the bogey of political correctness became a refurbished refuge for scoundrels until, with the election of Barack Obama, a full-blown atavistic epidemic of name-calling and outright demonization of nonwhite groups, native or immigrant, broke upon the land. That was the beginning of a relapse to the good old days when white was right and nonwhites knew to stay in their place.

Academia and the intellectual class cannot claim innocence in the debacle that is life under Trump for most of Americas inhabitants. The widespread diffusion of less sophisticated variants of postmodernism, deconstructionism and post-structuralism in our higher education institutions has led to the proliferation of motley nihilisms, ranging from mild to severe, undermining truth claims, making fashionable the miniaturization of social life, political movements and even protest traditions. The upshot is that the right wing has found a way to weaponize doubt in favor of the noble lie, peddling outright falsehoods while placing the onus on the rest of us to show why those lies are not true and making it almost impossible to have genuine debates about the gravest issues of life and death.

We now inhabit a world of alternative facts and outright falsehoods promulgated by our president and his minions in the White House. Those only rankle a few of us in what their supporters readily demonize as the elites or the unpatriotic, humorless political correctness police, and have become par for the course for the electorate that elected Trump and handed him a Republican Congress.

I would not like to be misunderstood. Yes, individuals are important in the evolution of historical processes. No doubt Trumps personality and his knack for exploiting the basest aspects of human nature for personal gain, money, fame and now power must not be ignored or underestimated. But he did not create, nor could he have created, a situation in which our basest characteristics are there for the taking.

Our challenge now is to reconnect with the angelic in us and to stop playing suckers to the likes of Donald Trump to cease placing them at the center of our public life, much less at the helm. This may be on the order of actuating the punchline from Bertolt Brechts satirical The Solution, which calls for the government to dissolve the people and elect another. Of course we cannot dissolve the American people or create them again from nothing. We need to effect a sea change in them to prevent a renewal of the Trump incubus in 2020.

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Donald Trump will be a two-term president unless the opposition can find a way to change America - Salon

When I wrote a piece a few days after the election, The Mike Pence (Donald Trump) Assault On LGBTQ Equality Is Already Underway, I hoped against all hope that something might change to alter what was already happening during the Trump transition.

But in fact, much of what I reported has materialized in the first 100 days. And theres reason to believe the second 100 days will be worse.

In the first 100 days Trump installed viciously anti-gay individuals in his cabinet and throughout the government departments, all of whom were brought forth from the Mike Pence-run transition team, from Ben Carson and Roger Severino to Tom Priceand Jeff Sessions. Trump and Sessions, the attorney general, already rescinded guidanceon fighting discrimination against transgender students across the country, and had the Justice Department halt litigation against North Carolina regarding HB2 and the equally discriminatory law that replaced it. The Trump administration decided there was no need to move forward with the Census Bureaus planned data collection on LGBT Americans, thereby keeping LGBTQ people invisible.

Though Trump made a little bit of a spectacle of not rescinding President Obamas executive order banning anti-LGBT discrimination among federal contractors, his administration later quietly issued an order ending data collection among contractors about such discrimination thus allowing for it. Similarly, the administration stopped collecting data on discrimination against elderly LGBTQ people. Trump removed Eric Fanning as Army Secretary, appointed by President Obama and the first openly gay Army Secretary in history, and has now nominated an anti-LGBTQ Tennessee legislator, Mark Green, to the job a man who sponsored a bill allowing discrimination against LGBTQ people and who has called transgender people evil.

And perhaps most consequentially, Trump placed on the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch, a constitutional originalist in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia by his own description and someone whose idea of religious liberty is a direct threat to LGBTQ rights.

But heres why the next 100 days and after that could be far worse: Trump is continuing to plummet in approval ratings and he needs his base to back him and to back the GOP more than ever if he has any hopes of re-election and of keeping Congress in the hands of the GOP in 2018 and beyond. He just barely made it in 2016, and any softening of any part of his base will spell doom. The anti-LGBTQ religious right turned out for Trump in numbers as great or greaterthan every previous recent Republican presidential candidate.

Christian right activists are already demanding much more. They were hoping a religious liberty executive order which would allow for widespread discrimination against LGBT people would have been issued already, and were disappointed when the Trump administration early on said a leaked draft of it wasnt coming soon.

But Trump transition official Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council, told me in February it was indeed coming, and was being fine-tuned to withstand a legal challenge. Last week USA Todayreported that a group of 51 GOP legislators in the Housesent a letter to the White House asking for the order to be signed:

[We] request that you sign the draft executive order on religious liberty, as reported by numerous outlets on February 2, 2017, in order to protect millions of Americans whose religious freedom has been attacked or threatened over the last eight years.

These are anti-LGBTQ legislators who backed Trump and who represent the armies of the Christian right. Theyre pressuring him to move ahead with the anti-LGBTQ agenda he promised. Though the media downplayed it, Trump courted these people at events and through their media during the campaign, promising everything from protecting religious liberty to getting the Obergefell marriage equality ruling overturned.

Again, if Trump has illusions of winning re-election, and helping the GOP in Congress, he knows he must deliver to his base, and wont be able to lose any of it. If you thought the GOP was done with the issue of marriage equality, for example, you need only to look at House member Randy Weber of Texas, who last week wept as he asked God to forgive the U.S. for making marriage legal for gays and lesbians at an event attended by the GOP House leadership (including Paul Ryan), which didnt challenge him.

The Christian right isnt satisfied with what they see as the crumbs Trump has given them in the first 100 days. Theyre demanding much, much more, and Trump, like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both of whom courted the Christian right and believed they needed evangelical voters for re-election, will feel compelled to deliver. (And one could argue that Reagan, and to a lesser extent Bush, didnt need that religious right base for re-election as much as Trump desperately does.)

Thats why the next 100 days and beyond are even more treacherous, and why well have to pay great attention and fight back hard.

Follow Michelangelo Signorile on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/msignorile

The rest is here:
Why Donald Trump's Second 100 Days Will Be Even Worse For LGBTQ Equality - Huffington Post

As they gave President Donald Trump high marks for his first 100 days in office, a trio of conservative radio talk show hosts at a Riverside conference Sunday, April 30 urged congressional Republicans to get their act together and pass the presidents agenda, especially repealing Obamacare.

Its OK to disagree. Its fine to be a divided caucus if at the end of the day, you come together and take 75 percent of what you want and call it a win, Dennis Prager told an audience of more than 800 at the Fourth Annual Unite IE Conservative Conference.

Republicans generally do not perceive the threat that the left is to our society, he added. This is the Achilles heel of the Republican Party If you do understand it, then any victory is a victory.

The conference, which took place at the Riverside Convention Center, offered a chance for conservatives to gather, network and be inspiredin a state thats been hostile ground for their beliefs.

This years conference focused on the first 100 days of the Trump administration, which hit that mark Saturday. Radio host Hugh Hewitt, who served as a panelist for four debates of GOP presidential hopefuls, gave Trump a solid B, saying the Republican real estate mogul and reality TV star needs to fill more judgeships.

Another radio personality, Larry Elder, gave Trump an A+, calling the nomination and confirmation of conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch far and away the presidents most important accomplishment.

Prager gave Trump an A- and apologized for resisting Trumps quest for the GOP presidential nomination.

I am starting to love this man and I thought I would never say that in my life, Prager said.

Unlike liberals, Trump doesnt care if America is loved, Prager said, adding: The recipe for peace on Earth is not for America to be loved, but feared.

The audience in the convention center expressed their support for Trump through the applause. The loudest cheers came when event co-emcee and local radio host Jennifer Horn asked how many in the crowd gave Trump an A, with fewer claps for those who give him a B and the lightest applause for those giving him a C.

The conference also featured Joel Pollak, senior editor-at-large of the conservative news site Breitbart and author of the book How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution.

The unifying message that brought a New York former liberal Democrat together with conservative audiences in the Midwest and South and everywhere else we can think of was the pushback against the mainstream media, Pollak said, adding that Trump addressed issues like immigration and trade that were ignored by the Republican and Democratic parties.

Anti-Breitbart sentiment was on display at a morning protest outside the conference. About 50 protesters waved signs with slogans such as Evil Lurks and its Name is Breitbart, Impeach Vladimir Trump, Facts Still Matter and Hire a Clown, Get a Circus.

Lecia Elzig of Riverside held a sign with provocative Breitbart headlines seen as offensive to women, including Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.

Elzig said she respected the right of conference-goers to assemble. Were just here exercising our constitutional rights, she said.

More:
Why there were cheers for Donald Trump in Riverside - Press-Enterprise

"I loved my previous life, I loved my previous life. I had so many things going," Trump told Reuters. "I actually, this is more work than my previous life. I thought it would be easier."

Then, later: "I do miss my old life. This -- I like to work. But this is actually more work."

That sentiment is, in a word, strange. For a few reasons.

It's absolutely true that all presidents express -- privately and then, eventually, publicly -- some level of longing for the life they left behind or the life they will return to. But that usually happens after, say, seven or eight years in the White House. Not after 99 days.

The truth is -- and even Donald Trump might admit this in his most candid moments -- that he had almost zero idea of what being president would entail when he started running for the office almost two years ago now.

When he entered the race in June 2015, there was no reasonable expectation that he would even sniff the top tier of the Republican field. He was seen as a curiosity, a celebrity calling everyone's bluff who said he never could, should or would run.

Throughout the campaign -- even as he improbably rose to the top of the GOP field and stayed there -- Trump would always tell his crowds that being president would be easy, and that he would solve the problems of the country so quickly they wouldn't believe it.

"Together we're going to deliver real change that once again puts Americans first," Trump promised a Florida audience last October. "You're going to have such great health care, at a tiny fraction of the costand it's going to be so easy."

(Nota bene: Republican attempts to even hold a vote on legislation that would reform and replace the Affordable Care Act died Thursday night. For the second time in as many months.)

It's, of course, true that no president is ever, really, ready for the job when they come into office. But Trump's understanding of the office -- and of the political process was minuscule. He had never run for or served in any elected office. (Say what you will about the relative inexperience of George W. Bush and Barack Obama before ascending to the presidency but they had been elected and served as governor and senator, respectively.) Trump's experience in politics, by contrast, amounted to giving money when someone asked him to. And that's about it.

Which is how someone who has been president for the last 99 days can repeatedly express amazement that the job is hard -- far harder than he expected -- and wax nostalgic about his old life.

Trump's old life was, without question, easier than his current one. He starred in a reality TV show. He was the brand manager of a company built around his ostentatious personality. He did, basically, what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.

Now his life is totally and completely proscribed. He has very little agency in all of it. He goes where he is told when he is told. And much of what Trump does on a daily basis is a radical departure from the "being Donald Trump" role that he had been playing for decades prior to winning the White House. He has to confront problems -- the Middle East, North Korea, healthcare -- in which he can't just snap his fingers, make a decision and move on. Nothing -- or almost nothing-- is black and white. It's all shades of gray. It's, um, hard.

Given all of that, it's easy to see why Trump might pine for the simpler life he led prior to being elected president. It's just very, very odd he decided to say that publicly less than 100 days into his administration.

The rest is here:
Donald Trump sounds like he really misses not being president - CNN