I can just picture the The New York Times gathering a team of actuaries, legal accountants, tax historians, advisers and financial consultants around a big executive office table, piled high with reams of papers and spent coffee cups, saying:

“We’ve got him now…. as soon as people understand: fixed asset depreciation schedules; and if the assets were depreciated legally using straight line or diminishing balance; then we move to whole-value equity pick-up, or minority interest accounting; before digging into section 1031 ‘like-kind’ asset exchanges; partnerships (limited or writ large), carried interest loopholes, pass-throughs, net capital losses/gains, seven-year income averaging and the difference between long-term and short-term capital gains”…

…or something.

Seriously, the ‘Trump-taxes’ story has to be the biggest, funniest, most well documented, and most absurd, ongoing snipe hunt in history. “I was going to support President Trump’s re-election until I saw his depreciated amortization schedule from 1989″… said no-one, like, ever.

Could it be possible John Barron is still pulling this hilarious trick twenty-five years after the New York Times called Donald Trump “The Comeback King“?…

October 25th 1995 New York Times – Crowning the Comeback King – Though there are still four years to go in the 90’s, business and government leaders in New York honored Donald J. Trump yesterday for pulling off what they called “the comeback of the decade.” Mr. Trump, the developer who came to epitomize opulent wealth during the 80’s before tumbling into deep financial trouble, has managed to erase much of his debt and is moving ahead with major projects at a time other developers are idling. Judging from the attention showered on him yesterday at the Union League Club, some of New York’s civic and business leaders are quite captivated by Mr. Trump, despite the financial uncertainties that still surround some of his properties. But the operative word at the luncheon was comeback, though Mr. Trump might dispute that he ever went far away. William D. Fugazy, the limousine magnate and chairman of the Forum Club, the group of business and civic leaders that sponsored the luncheon, presented Mr. Trump with a boomerang encased in glass. “You throw it and it always comes back,” he said as he handed it over. (read more)