Twitter Critics Slam 'Billion Dollar Loser' Donald Trump After Investigation Into Previous Finances Woes
The hashtag #BillionDollarLoser trended on Twitter on Wednesday after a New York Times report detailed President Donald Trump‘s business and financial woes spanning nearly a decade in the ’80s and ’90s.
According to the Times, federal tax documents from 1985 to 1994 show that Trump only paid income taxes twice during those years, earning his exemption otherwise due to the massive amounts of money he was losing.
Trump totaled losses over $1 billion over that 10-year period — a reality at odds with how he has marketed himself as a deal-savvy businessman, including during the 2016 presidential election.
Trump quickly slammed the Times investigation as a “hit job” but did not dispute the losses themselves. Instead he obliquely defended the large sums as “depreciations” and “massive write offs.”
As news of the president’s past business woes spread across social media, Trump critics began widely sharing the hashtag #BillionDollarLoser as rebuke of his carefully crafted image as a wealthy tycoon.
The account Statistics That Matter noted the losses broke down to a rate of $11,416 per hour for 87,600 hours.
Andrew Weinstein, an appointee in President Barack Obama‘s White House, tweeted: “As it turns out, @realDonaldTrump wasn’t lying when he said ‘I’m going to do for the country what I did for my business.’ ”
Another user wrote, “Every janitor working in Trump Tower paid more income taxes than Trump did in 8 out of 10 years.”
RELATED: Donald Trump Says There’s ‘Nothing to Learn’ from His Tax Returns: Here’s Why Experts Disagree
Donald Trump May Be One of the Biggest Losers in America—The “VERY successful businessman” only paid income tax twice between 1985 and 1994—and lost more money than “nearly any other individual American taxpayer.”#BiggestLoser #BillionDollarLoser https://t.co/HonfIPBg5F
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) May 8, 2019
In 1988, Donald Trump bought an airline, but within 18 months, it lost over $125 million. #BillionDollarLoser pic.twitter.com/GjOUhcfgvM
— Typical Trumpism (@TypicalTrumpism) May 8, 2019
RELATED: Donald Trump’s Taxes Finally Revealed? Times Claims He May Have Avoided Paying Taxes for 18 Years
To lose $1 billion over 10 years means that you have to
- to lose $11,416 per hour for 87600 hours
- to lose $274,000 every single day for 3650 days
- to lose $8.3 million every month for 120 months
- to lose $100 million every year for 10 years.
#BillionDollarLoser pic.twitter.com/PkEGLklZBE— Statistics That Matter 🌐 (@Stats_Matter) May 8, 2019
Trump’s refusal to disclose his tax returns and financial history have been a source of significant controversy ever since his presidential campaign.
The Times was only able to obtain the information in his tax returns from a source who had legal access to them, according to the report.
House Democrats, swept to power in last year’s midterms, have vowed to investigate the full scope of the president’s financial ties and business dealings, which have largely been kept secret.
