President Donald Trump is a polarizing politician. Even his most ardent supporters have conceded that his style of governing is to divide and conquer.
The president has been effective in deflecting criticisms of the many promises that he made as a citizen, candidate and president. He has made it a hallmark of his presidency to honor all of the many promises that he made to his political supporters since he began running for the White House.
To his credit, he has made good on many of those promises. Many, but not all.
Early in his campaign for president, he repeatedly promised to release his tax returns. He was under no obligation to release them, but it was a tradition of serious presidential candidates to do so. It validated their veracity and willingness to be transparent.
We are now more than 500 days into his presidency, and he still has not released his tax returns.
His original excuse for not releasing them was that his tax returns since 2009 were under IRS audit. There is little public information on his past tax returns and what is available goes back to 2005. It is now 2018. An entire generation of Americans has been born and is now in middle school since the last public inspection of his returns.
Why does this matter? It matters because he constantly refers to Hillary Clinton as “Crooked Hillary” and to President Barack Obama in equally unflattering terms. The chant “Lock her up” was used to rally supporters during the campaign, with the underlying claim that she has not been honest and transparent and so therefore cannot be trusted. It is a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black. It is political hypocrisy.
It should be noted that both Secretary Clinton and President Obama have released their tax returns to the general public.
I am confident that an army of skilled tax accountants have convinced the president that he has little or no federal tax issues to worry about. Releasing his tax returns will allow the American people to judge for themselves if the president is the successful businessman that he and many of his supporters claim he is. His boisterous claims about his business acumen and the “art of the deal” are central to his administrations international trade policies and to his promise to make America great again.
New Hampshire voters take their politics seriously. Republicans, Democrats and independents expect politicians to keep their promises. Honesty is at the core of this matter.
It is time for the president to release his latest tax returns. Doing so would honor a promise that he made to the voters in New Hampshire and to the American people, and assure them that he is both honest and transparent.
(Jim Baer lives in Concord.)