President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist thinks a paltry piece of paper like the Constitution can’t stop the president from serving a third term.
“This is being fought behind closed doors right now, and I’m telling you, with the massive tax cut […] he’s going to give the working class and the middle class, the math only works out if you actually increase taxes on the wealthy,” Steve Bannon, whose estimated net worth stands just north of $20 million, said during a Friday appearance on NewsNation.
“President Trump, I strongly believe [he] will do it,” he went on. “One of the things he talked about is … politically, it might hurt him. Politically, it’s going to help him in his reelection in 2028.”
The prospect of higher rates for American taxpayers earning a million a year or more has emerged as a deeply polarizing issue for the MAGA movement, potentially pitting GOP veterans averse to Big State moves against newer-school nationalist-populists enamoured of their billionaire leader’s image as a working-class champion.
Trump, who for his part seems serious about circumventing constitutional provisions against third presidential terms, has lately adopted a paradoxical stance on the question of higher taxes for top-percentile earners.
Having paid just $750 in federal income tax in 2017, he has said he would “love” to tax wealthier Americans more and would happily pay higher rates himself, given the present estimates of his net worth, which range from $4 billion to more than $7 billion.
At the same time, he’s also suggested any such measures would only prove “disruptive,” raising the specter of capital flight from the United States at a time of heightened economic uncertainty as a result of his mutating trade war against the rest of the planet.
Bannon further claimed during his Friday interview that Trump has always been in favor of higher taxes for wealthier earners, and that the president planned to raise levies on the rich during his first stint in the White House but was talked out of it by his multi-millionaire son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
He also reiterated his belief that the Republican president will run again for office in four years’ time by noting the Trump Organization has already started selling 2028 merchandise as well as claiming to have pre-emptively bought some of those items for select MAGA critics to wear in the event the plans do indeed go ahead.
The post Steve Bannon Brags Trump Millionaire Tax Will Bag Him a Third Term appeared first on The Daily Beast.
