Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality.

Eighteen years? He paid no taxes?

Are you sure this is standard practice?

No wonder he won’t release his returns.

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The bigger the losses, the more he earns.

Airline, Trump U, and casinos

All went belly-up but he knows

Loss is gain. My projection:

He’ll make money from a lost election.

It’s been one first after another. First candidate to offer a health plan described only as really “beautiful” and “unbelievable.” First ever to brag about his penis. First to be endorsed by the National Enquirer. First to have gone through six bankruptcies. First to say about his opponent’s TV ads: “It’s not nice. And I don’t deserve that.” Did Barry Goldwater say of LBJ “He’s not nice to me”? I frankly doubt it very much. And what candidate has seen his name so often in the same sentence with Mussolini’s?

And then came the New York Times article : Donald Trump lost $916 million in one year. Not a great accomplishment for a guy who took courses at Wharton. (For someone who attended the Iowa Writers Workshop, yes, but not a businessman.) No wonder he is reluctant to show off his tax return.

A report in the New York Times says a $916 million loss in the '90s might have allowed Donald Trump to legally avoid paying any income taxes for almost two decades. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

[Trump’s angry white men]

You have to worry what his campaign is doing to his businesses. Angry unemployed white people are not a great demographic for high-end stuff. Maybe instead of selling luxury condos and golf memberships, he’ll have to turn to trailer parks and tattoo parlors. Trump Pizza. Don’s Used RVs. I’m serious. From what I’ve been told, I don’t know if it’s true, his swanky new hotel down the street from the White House is practically deserted and the employees are required to wear tourist clothing and hang around the lobby pretending to be customers and engage in light-hearted conversation and order expensive drinks which are actually Lipton’s tea on the rocks. I’ve heard this from various people.

Millions of Republicans will vote for him in the blind faith that he cannot possibly be elected. They are sure that a man with that particular scowling face, whose smile is a smirk, a face that says loud and clear “overprivileged rich boy who never grew up,” can never win the hearts of Middle America. Republicans have the most to lose since they tend to be more invested in stocks and bonds, and there is a consensus that a loose cannon in the White House will not play well on Wall Street. In other words, there will be a Trump tax to be paid — some people say 10 to 20 percent right off the top.

Investors are watching. The S&P 500 took an upward swoop after Hillary Clinton clearly dominated the first debate, meanwhile Citigroup advised that if Trump’s chances improve, you should consider selling stocks and bonds and buying gold. A downturn in the market won’t mean much to the unemployed coal miners of West Virginia, but Republicans with a nice retirement portfolio might take serious losses. Under the socialist regime of our Kenyan president, the Dow Jones has more than doubled. How conservative is it to elect a successor who is playing a persona, whose true thinking is unknown and his likely course of action unpredictable?

[A President Trump could end the era of American global leadership]

I’m a tired old liberal. I don’t need a revolution; amiable competence is good enough. Decent schools, great hospitals, buses that run on time, smart cops, and programs for the autistic kids that there seem to be so many more of. The Second Amendment? Feh. In Wyoming, feel free, but on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, if you openly carry a weapon and you’re not a cop, you are a scary person and a threat to the community. In Waco, carry a bazooka on your shoulder, I don’t care.

The question that has never been asked is this: Why has Trump never shown his belly-button? Does he have an umbilicus or not? Why the secrecy? Could it be that he was one of those early test-tube humanoid babies bred in a Monsanto laboratory in Las Cruces in 1946 under contract to the Pentagon, which hoped to create a cadre of bogeymen who would walk straight into heavy gunfire, grinning, thumbs-up, and thereby dishearten the enemy? They had realistic skin and hair but their eyes were small and piggish and their fingers short. Mr. Trump has taken heavy fire for the past year and there isn’t a scratch on him. Lift up your shirt, sir, and let us see it.