Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt said Wednesday that a report chronicling President Trump’s massive business losses over a 10-year period was an “impressive” look at everything the real estate mogul accomplished.
“If anything, you read this and you’re like ‘wow, it’s pretty impressive, all the things that he’s done in his life,'” Earhardt said on “Fox & Friends” after The New York Times, citing IRS transcripts, reported that Trump’s businesses accumulated $1.2 billion in losses between 1985 and 1994.
“It’s beyond what most of us could ever achieve,” she added.
{mosads}The Times report revealed that Trump’s business losses continued to grow in the late ’80s and early ’90s. In 1990 and 1991, Trump’s business losses were more than $250 million.
The documents the newspaper received also indicated that the president avoided paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years because of his massive losses. It remains unclear if the IRS asked him to make changes after audits.
The Times did not receive copies of Trump’s actual tax returns from 1985 to 1994. But the newspaper obtained copies of Trump’s tax transcripts that included figures from his federal tax forms.
Earhardt and her fellow “Fox & Friends” hosts dismissed the idea that the report painted a damaging picture of Trump. Brian Kilmeade, for example, said that the story actually displayed that the president was a “bold businessman” because he was willing to take risks.
“There’s nothing about this article that should surprise anybody that got the [New York] Daily News and New York Post throughout the last 10 years,” Kilmeade said. “I can’t imagine having that much money, spending that much money and being in debt. For him, it makes sense; he’s buying now, building it up because he had confidence, he knows that the properties will be worth more.”
“For Donald Trump, he says, ‘I got some money but I want to really expand my empire, I want to take chances,’ ” Kilmeade said later. “That’s what he’s done through his entire life.”
“Fox & Friends” co-host Steve Doocy also noted that there’s no suggestion of Trump breaking the law.
“I think the suggestion is simply that he used the tax laws to his benefit,” he said.
Trump called The Times’s report a “highly inaccurate Fake News hit job” in Wednesday morning tweets. He defended his losses, saying that real estate developers in the 1980s and 1990s were entitled to “massive write offs and depreciation which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases.”
The report from the Times came amid a contentious standoff between the White House and congressional Democrats over the president’s tax returns. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday rejected a request from House Democrats for copies of Trump’s federal tax returns.