Trump: ‘I’m Working for You Now’

Donald Trump on Monday offered a full-throated defense of his business record, saying he “brilliantly” used legal options under the tax code to minimize his company’s tax burden.

The Republican nominee for president, speaking in Pueblo, Colorado, referenced a weekend story in The New York Times suggesting that the Manhattan real estate mogul may have used massive losses in the 1990s to avoid paying taxes for the next 18 years.

“The news media is now obsessed with an alleged tax filing from the 1990s at the end of one of the most brutal economic downturns in our country’s history.”

“The news media is now obsessed with an alleged tax filing from the 1990s at the end of one of the most brutal economic downturns in our country’s history,” Trump said, without specifically confirming the accuracy of the report.

Trump said the early 1990s commercial real estate downturn was worse than the one that followed in 2008. He said it put a lot of his friends and competitors out of business.

“I have legally used the tax laws to my benefit and to the benefit of my company, my investors, and my employees,” he said. “Honestly, I have brilliantly used those laws.”

Trump said he had a duty to pay as little in taxes as the law allowed.

“It’s my job to minimize the overall tax burden to the greatest extent possible, which allows me to reinvest in neighborhoods, in workers, and build amazing properties, which fuel tremendous growth in their communities and always helps our great providers of jobs — and we have to help our small businesses,” he said.

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Trump said his intimate experience in reducing his tax burden makes him uniquely qualified to streamline a loophole-riddled tax code that is thousands of pages long and so complex that even many experts do not understand it.

“Fortunately, I understand it,” he said.

Improving the tax code, Trump said, is one of the main reasons he decided to run for president in the first place.

“This is not the fault of the IRS but the political class that is owned outright by the special interests and lobbyists, believe me,” he said. “It’s these politicians who wrote the tax code and who are constantly adding, revising, and changing an already over-complicated set of laws, all at the behest of their favorite donors and special interests … who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

While acknowledging that he has benefited enormously from the loopholes embedded in the tax system, Trump told the crowd, “I’m working for you now; I’m not working for Trump.”

Trump said he is at his best when the odds are long and his back is up against the wall. He said he relished the idea of fighting every day to save his company during the depths of the downturn.

He suggested that the results for his company — “We’ve never done better; we’re the strongest we’ve ever been” — can be transferred to a country that is facing nearly $20 trillion in debt, a listless economy, and a depleted military.

Trump contrasted his wealth, the result of a large business employing thousands of people, with Clinton’s.

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“While I made my money as a successful businessperson, following the law all the way, Hillary Clinton made her money as a corrupt public official, breaking the law and putting her government office up for sale,” he said. “And now she’s running for president.”

Monday’s stop in Pueblo was one of two in Colorado, a swing state where polls have been close but where a survey released Monday suggested Clinton had opened up an 11-point lead. Trump peppered his speech with several items of particular concern to the state. In a state with six military bases, he vowed to rebuild the Armed Forces. He said he would protect Colorado’s natural resources and safeguard the “under siege” Second Amendment.

And Trump suggested he would usher in an energy-fueled economic boom.

“Crooked Hillary Clinton wants to shut down the mines and shut down shale and shut down oil and natural gas,” he said. “And we’re going to end the war on American energy, and we’re going to put the miners back to work. They have to be put back to work.”