Clinton on Trump: 'What kind of a genius loses a billion dollars?'


Hillary Clinton used her speech in Toledo on Monday to discuss the economy, while weaving in Donald Trump's tax returns, telling the crowd that the Republican nominee has been "contributing nothing to our nation."
Over the weekend, The New York Times published three pages of Trump's personal New York State returns from 1995, which showed a declared loss of $916 million. This could have legally allowed Trump, who has not denied the report, to avoid paying federal income taxes for 18 years, leaving Clinton to ask: "What kind of genius loses a billion dollars in a single year? That is Trump to a tee. He's taken corporate excess and made a business model out of it. He abuses his power, games the system, and puts his own interests ahead of the country's. It's always Trump first and everyone else last."
Trump has been "taking from America with both hands and leaving the rest of us with the bill," Clinton continued. Millions of American families have been working hard and "paying their fair share," while Trump, it seems, "was contributing nothing to our nation. Imagine that. Not fair. Now, how anybody can lose a dollar, let alone a billion dollars, in the casino industry is kind of beyond me." The Democratic presidential nominee went on to propose a new law that would make it mandatory for every major party nominee to release their tax returns.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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