I never cared much about Donald Trump’s tax returns. Why should I? Why should anybody?

So I pretty much ignored all the hoopla surrounding the release when they were dumped out into the public. Of all the presidents we have had in the past few decades, Trump was the one least likely to use his office to get rich.

He is already rich. So rich that he donated his salary every year that he was president.

All the ridiculous talk of emoluments, schemes to use the office to enrich himself seemed beside the point. Trump loves himself some money and will do ridiculous things to make it, but even if he did use his office to enrich himself he wouldn’t be stupid enough to have it show up on his tax returns.

And sure enough, his returns tell us little except that Trump seems to be the only human being on the planet who didn’t get richer while he was president. He lost over a billion dollars of net worth.

As with most Trump controversies, it was much ado about nothing. Nothing bad was done by Trump, and while lots of commentators are cherry picking years when Trump paid little in taxes due to business losses, they ignore the fact that over his presidency he paid a million dollars in taxes.

Trump never claimed that he liked paying taxes; he even bragged that he did everything he could legally to avoid the practice. As any red-blooded American should. The federal government wastes trillions of dollars and you are an idiot to simply donate to the government what isn’t legally required.

This controversy, like almost every Trump “outrage,” is nothing but a smear. There are lots of reasons to dislike Trump but enriching himself in office is not one of them. Trump wines, on the other hand….

I would be much more interested in seeing the financials of politicians who entered office without much wealth but have grown immensely wealthy during their tenure. By what mechanism, exactly, did they do this on their relatively modest salaries? What about their families, who also often find their fortunes improve during their tenure.

The idea that anybody who supports Joe Biden could care about any financial malfeasance by Trump is ludicrous. The Biden family is little more than a circle of grifters using Joe’s political connections to get rich. Bill Clinton entered office a relative pauper and together with Hillary is now worth north of $100 million.

That is quite an achievement for a guy who has never worked in business. “Public service” has been very good to the Clintons, I would say.

One of the things that is easy to notice is that every accusation that is hurled by the Left at a Republican is a projection of their own greed and malfeasance. Elites often get where they are through some grift or another, they use their own experience to hurl invective at their opponent. It’s a rare Leftist who gets rich through starting and running a business, so perhaps they genuinely cannot comprehend making money legitimately.

Not every grifter is a Leftist–there are plenty to go around–but nearly every Leftist is a grifter.

Still, I am not that interested in seeing their tax returns. I am sure their accountants are as good at manipulating numbers as well as Trump’s. What I would really like to see is somebody doing a correlation between the investments of politicians and the legislation they write and have access to.

That would be a great project for a forensic accountant.