Donald Trump denied Wednesday that he admitted in Monday's debate that he hasn't paid taxes, but at the same time, he said there are many people who think someone with that kind of smarts is what the country needs.
"I never said I didn't pay taxes," the GOP nominee told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, reports The Washington Post. "[Hillary Clinton] said, 'Maybe you didn't pay taxes.' And I said, 'Well, that would make me smart,' because tax is a big payment. But a lot of people say, 'That's the kind of thinking that I want running this nation.'"
And rather than casting doubt on Trump, he thinks his "smart" statement met with approval from voters.
"Some people loved that statement, and other people didn't," Trump told O'Reilly. "But the fact is that I think people are looking at it like maybe that's the kind of person we need . . . I think that's the kind of thinking we need in our country."
Trump has not yet released his tax returns, saying the documents are still being audited and his attorneys have told him to keep them under wrap.
However, Clinton has posted nine years of her own returns online and said Monday that there's "something he's hiding," speculating that perhaps his net worth is less than the $10 billion he has claimed, or that he may owe money to foreign banks and Wall Street.
"Or maybe he doesn't want the American people — all of you watching tonight — to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes," Clinton said.
"Because the only years that anybody's ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license and they showed he didn't pay any federal income tax."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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