Trump responds to New York Times bombshell on his taxes, insists losing money 'was sport' in the '80s

The New York Times reported late Tuesday that President Trump reported $1.17 billion in losses at his core businesses between 1985 and 1994, that during that period Trump "appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer," and that his losses were so massive he didn't pay any federal income tax for eight of those 10 years. With a bombshell like this, Trump had three choices: Ignore the report; concede that he was a very bad deal-maker, as the hometown New York Daily News suggested ...

... or three, say that he was a great businessman, and the proof is that he might have recorded exaggerated or fake losses to avoid paying taxes like the rest of you suckers. Obviously, Trump went with No. 3.

Trump wasn't always so impressed with the business acumen of legal tax-dodgers.

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Since that 2015 tweet, Trump has "sent at least a dozen tweets critical of how little the company pays in taxes," Bloomberg News reports. But "Trump used parts of the U.S. tax code to whittle down his tax bill to nothing for several years, the same sections that Amazon has used to pay no federal income taxes for the past two years."