I mean, you didn’t think Donald Trump was hiding his taxes because he was more successful than we thought. While it may feel satisfying to see some paperwork behind the house of cards, the NYT’s exposé on Trump’s taxes is hardly surprising. Maybe the only bewildering part of his decades-long plot to dupe everyone from television audiences to the IRS is that it all leaves him without a pot to pee tape in. In essence, he ran a reverse pyramid scheme. He cheated, borrowed, and lied, all to end up broke. Give Trump credit for this (and by credit, I mean the public acknowledgement kind, not the financial instrument kind): No one has ever done a better job playing the part of a successful businessman. Ironically, that’s the one thing he’s made money doing. NYT: How Reality-Tv Fame Handed Trump a $427 Million Lifeline. “Months after that inaugural episode in January 2004, Mr. Trump filed his individual tax return reporting $89.9 million in net losses from his core businesses for the prior year. The red ink spilled from everywhere, even as American television audiences saw him as a savvy business mogul with the Midas touch. Twelve years later, that image of the self-made, self-saved mogul, beamed into the national consciousness, would help fuel Mr. Trump’s improbable election to the White House.”

+ NYT: 18 Revelations From a Trove of Trump Tax Records. “In addition to the 11 years in which he paid no taxes during the 18 years examined by The Times, he paid only $750 in each of the two most recent years — 2016 and 2017.”

+ My dad is in the real estate business, so I’ve been hearing him explain Trump’s financial shenanigans for decades. When it comes to this story, I might be the least surprised person in the world. Well, outside of Scotland… “October marks the 15th anniversary of the incorporation of Mr Trump’s first Scottish company, set up to facilitate the development of his inaugural Scottish course … In that entire time, not a single one of Mr Trump’s companies has paid a penny in corporation tax to authorities in the UK. The reason? Not a single one has ever turned a profit.”

+ The question of the moment: Will 750 convince people when 200,000 didn’t? Or as The New Yorker’s David Remnick puts it: Donald Trump Barely Pays Any Taxes: Will Anyone Care? For the Trump psyche, I think there’s actually much more at stake than votes. This is life-long fraud coming unraveled. The psychic pain is on a level a normal person can barely relate to. It’s the everything story.