Right after Donald Trump refused to deny that he doesn’t pay any federal income taxes, Hillary Clinton turned to his business record, saying that “if your main claim to be president of the United States is your business, then I think we should talk about that.”
… I have met a lot of the people who were stiffed by you and your businesses, Donald. I've met dishwashers, painters, architects, glass installers, marble installers, drapery installers, like my dad was, who you refused to pay when they finished the work that you asked them to do.
We have an architect in the audience who designed one of your clubhouses at one of your golf courses. It's a beautiful facility. It immediately was put to use. And you wouldn't pay what the man needed to be paid, what he was charging you to do…
Here, Trump fell back on his usual excuse: “Maybe he didn't do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work.” Except, Donald, that somehow this has happened thousands of times. Either you’re falsely claiming you’re not happy with people’s work in order to justify refusing to pay them what you owe, what you promised … or you are the world’s worst manager to keep hiring such unsatisfactory people. Clinton continued:
CLINTON: Do the thousands of people that you have stiffed over the course of your business not deserve some kind of apology from someone who has taken their labor, taken the goods that they produced, and then refused to pay them?
But of course Trump is never going to apologize. He thinks it’s plain, simple, good business sense to cheat people if you can put money in your own pocket that way. “I take advantage of the laws of the nation because I'm running a company,” he answered. In the same way, he thinks it’s good business sense to spend his answer bragging not just about his “unbelievable company” with “some of the greatest assets anywhere in the world,” but specifically advertising his new hotel in Washington, D.C. Grifters gonna grift, and this is one unapologetic grifter.
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