Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) slammed President Trump on Sunday over a report in The New York Times detailing his personal tax contributions over the past 20 years.
In a tweet, the first-term New York lawmaker pointed to the taxes reportedly paid by the president and former media mogul in 2016 and 2017 — $750 a year — as being less than she paid while working as a bartender in New York City prior to her election to office in 2018.
“In 2016 & ‘17, I paid thousands of dollars a year in taxes *as a bartender.* Trump paid $750,” she tweeted. “He contributed less to funding our communities than waitresses & undocumented immigrants.
“Donald Trump has never cared for our country more than he cares for himself,” she continued. “A walking scam.”
A second tweet from the New York Democrat minutes later pointed to a part of the Times’s report revealing how the president had deducted numerous expenses usually handled by Americans as personal expenses, such as his hairstyling expenses, as business-related in order to avoid taxes.
“Last year Republicans blasted a firehose of hatred + vitriol my way because I treated myself to a $250 cut & lowlights on my birthday,” she tweeted. “Where’s the criticism of their idol spending $70k on hairstyling? Oh, it’s nowhere because they’re spineless, misogynistic hypocrites? Got it.”
The information targeted for ridicule by Ocasio-Cortez was part of a wide-ranging Times investigation into the president’s tax expenses, published Sunday, that revealed how little Trump paid in taxes in recent years as well as the extent of his businesses losses — many of the Trump Organization’s properties reported losing millions in the returns reported by the Times.
The president addressed the report at a press briefing Sunday, calling it “totally fake news” and claiming that his taxes remain under audit by the IRS.
A lawyer for the Trump Organization told the Times that “most, if not all,” of the Times’s reporting was inaccurate.
“Over the past decade, President Trump has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015,” the lawyer said.