The following article by Jennifer M. Wood was posted on the Death and Taxes Magazine website August 29, 2017:
Donald Trump’s top economic adviser Gary Cohn doesn’t always see eye to eye with his boss, but when it comes to cold, hard cash, they both think that paying taxes is for suckers. According to The New York Times, Cohn managed to piss off a group of Senate Democrats when he joked that “only morons pay the estate tax.”
The comment was made earlier this year in response to a conversation Dems wanted to have about whether it might make sense — including financially — to repeal the estate tax. Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs, didn’t hesitate to make his opinion on the matter known. The comment was repeated by more than one person who was present, though a source close to Cohn told NYT that he never used the “m” word and that his comment was about “rich people with really bad tax planning.”
It’s also worth repeating The Times’ description of Cohn in the piece:
Mr. Cohn — who wears monogrammed shirts, gold cuff links and a Rolex watch next to a brown leather bracelet with a “peace” tag and a black beaded one with silver skulls — has brought a brash style and a take-no-prisoners approach to the tax issue.
Just last week, Cohn seemed to be one of the few voices of reason in the White House when he criticized President I Don’t Give a Shit’s “both sides” response to the violence in Charlottesville. In an interview with the Financial Times, Cohn — claiming he had come under enormous pressure to resign his position — stated that, “I believe this administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities.”
If Cohn had been hired as the White House Communications Director, he’d undoubtedly have been sacked by now. But his job within the Trump administration is to sell POTUS’ tax plan, and money seems to be one area where they’re in definite agreement. After all, back in September 2016, during the first presidential debate, Trump did famously declare that he doesn’t pay taxes because “I’m smart.” Besides being a very dumb thing to stay (sic) when you’re stumping for POTUS, we could point to numerous incidents that would stand as an argument against Trump having a brain at all. But we’ll just leave it at this:
