White House flack admits: Lobbyists controlled Trump tax scam

With just days left before Republicans try to force a vote on their tax scam bill, Donald Trump’s economic advisers are doing everything they can to accidentally help out the efforts to defeat it.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was forced to admit Sunday morning that the plan would not deliver higher wages for many years, if ever.

And later that day, Trump’s Director of Legislative Affairs, Marc Short, bluntly admitted that lobbyists were in control of the bill’s contents.

On “Meet the Press,” host Chuck Todd played a montage of Trump’s lies and broken promises, and noted that “none of those things are true right now.”

“What do you say to those broken promises that the candidate Donald Trump made on taxes?” Todd asked.

Short didn’t bother to dispute Todd’s characterization, instead cherry-picking a few parts of the bill that he felt did fulfill promises that Trump made, and excusing the rest with that stunning admission:

SHORT: Chuck, there are many deliveries here in the bill that the president made promises on. One, it does simplify the tax code. Some of the things you’re not talking about is that it eliminates oil and gas production credits. It also eliminates many deductions that families and businesses were taking such as specifically lobbying expenses. It’s helping to drain the swamp. There are promises he made he delivered on. There are certain industries here that made it impossible for us to deliver on every single one of those.

Short’s excuse is stunning on its own, since a real leader would leverage the power of a veto to protect truly important principles, but doubly so with the revelation that the millionaire-and-billionaire real estate mogul industry is a late beneficiary of the tax scam’s largesse:

Corker called IBT to respond to a series of IBT investigative reports showing that he switched his vote to “yes” on the tax legislation, only after Republican leaders added in a provision reducing taxes on income from real-estate LLCs. Federal records reviewed by IBT show Corker, a commercial real estate mogul, made up to $7 million last year from such income. President Donald Trump’s financial disclosures listed between $41 million and $68 million of the same income.

Corker claims to know nothing about the provision, while Trump continues to tell the absurd lie that the tax bill won’t benefit him personally.

It has long been clear that Trump and the Republicans care more about draining Americans’ tax dollars into their donors’ pockets than “draining the swamp,” and now, even Trump’s own flacks are finding it impossible to say otherwise.

There is still time for the Senate to get the message, and for the American people to deliver it.