Be bound by it, but honestly on the Supreme Court the stakes are entirely different and she would have an opportunity to not only decide whether to follow precedent but to completely overrule it. Thats a great point. That answers not available anymore when you get us to scotus. Its always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for your time tonight. That is all in for this monday night. The Rachel Maddow show starts right now. Good evening. Much appreciated. Happy monday. Happy to have you with us tonight. Dont tell Lawrence Odonnell that i told you. I sort of said id be low key about it, but today is the tenyear anniversary of lawrences show. Today is the tenyear anniversary of the last word. Ten years. Nobody gets to be ten years old in this business. On the occasion of that big celebratory birthday, you should know that lawrence has a live interview tonight with the democratic partys Vice President ial candidate, senator kamala harris. That is happening live right after me, right after this show tonight. So you should plan now to stay on after me to watch that with lawrence and senator harris. Senator harris, of course, will be debating Vice President pence next week. That Vice President ial debate is next wednesday. But tomorrow, of course, is the first president ial debate between trump and biden. Ill have more details for you a little later on this hour about what our coverage of that is going to be like tomorrow night. I will be anchoring right up to the start of the debate with my beloved colleagues joy reid and nicolle wallace. And then youll be able to watch the whole thing live right here with us tomorrow night. Again, ill have more on that for you later on this hour. But the debates in this last leadup to the election, we now know, will coincide with the republicans in the senate trying to rush through the confirmation of a new hard, hard, hardline, archconservative Supreme Court nominee. The republican plan is to try to confirm Amy Coney Barrett right before the election. I think they are hoping that they will excite their base and demoralize the Democratic Base by doing that as close to the election as they can. Democrats, though, are not conceding that this is a done deal. Vice President Biden this weekend urging republican senators to not move the barrett nomination forward, to not move any nomination forward until after voters have chosen who they want as the next president. I urge every senator to take a step back from the brink, take off the blinders, the politics for just one critical moment and stand up for the constitution you swore to uphold. Just because you have the power to do something doesnt absolve you of your responsibility to do right by the American People. Uphold your constitutional duty. Summon your conscience. Summon your conscience. We shall see. It would take two more republican senators to side with senators collins and murkowski in saying this nomination should wait until after the election. If two more republican senators join with them in that, then this nomination, any nomination will wait until after the election. Democrats are pledging to do everything they can to stop any confirmation after the next president is inaugurated. With Public Opinion polling on their side, the pressure on republican senators is intense. The elements that are trying to stop this nomination are getting some backup now from boldface editorials like this one this weekend from the Washington Post. Headlined the senate should ignore Amy Coney Barretts nomination. This editorial is not about Amy Coney Barrett. No matter whom President Trump had picked to fill the late Ruth Bader GinsburgsSupreme Court seat, it would be the wrong choice because it is the wrong time. Senator republicans should be disgusted at playing the role they are being asked to play. The president himself has said hes counting on judge barretts hurried confirmation so she can rule on what he appears to believe are the inevitable election disputes he will bring before the court. He has spoken in recent days about getting rid of the ballots and enlisting the court in stopping the democrats voting scam, arguing that he needs a ninth justice of his choosing to ensure the court rules his way. The Editorial Board continues, quote, imagine the turmoil that would cause. A course hastily stacked with trump nominees hands reelection to the president based to a degree on his view that some americans ballots should not count. Are there not four republican senators, which is all it would take, with sufficient conscience or care for the country . Are there not four republican senators . Thats the Washington PostEditorial Board this weekend. The effort to delay any Supreme Court confirmation until after voters have chosen the next president will also get some additional backup, we now know, from a new womens march that is scheduled for saturday, october 17th, in washington, d. C. That means it will precede the election by about two weeks. That march will be aimed at trying to backstop these efforts to stop any Supreme Court nomination until after the inauguration. Its all happening all at once, right . All news streams on stun. Everything at the same time. And you might have heard, the New York Times got trumps taxes. More than 20 years of trump tax returns, finally, after all this time. In terms of how we got here, the times had previously published three pages from trumps taxes in 1995. Those three pages they received mysteriously, anonymously in the mail. That was in 2016 that they published those three pages. Those pages showed the president declaring huge financial losses from his failing business efforts like potentially more business losses than any other single taxpayer in the country that year. Then in 2017, we published two pages from Donald Trumps 2005 taxes. Two pages from his 2005 federal tax returns. Those two were obtained sort of mysteriously. They were mailed anonymously to reporter David Cay Johnston who then gave them to us to put on tv. Those two pages from the 2005 tax returns showed trump paying a bunch of taxes that year, but no real detail explaining why. Then the year after that, in 2018, the times published an epic multithousandword piece, an epic investigation into the financial history of the trump family and the trump Family Business based on financial and tax records that we later learned that they had obtained from the president s niece, from mary trump. Mary trump, of course, published a bestselling book this summer that was in part about her providing those Family Financial records to the times, which became the basis for that expoee in the times, for which times reporters won a Pulitzer Prize and which led ultimately to mary trump filing a new lawsuit against her uncle, the president , for allegedly cheating her out of tens of millions of dollars worth of the inherited family fortune. So all of that had happened 2016, 2017, 2018. The book this summer from mary trump. The new lawsuit from mary trump about the family finances. But now what has just happened in the times, this is Something Different on an order of magnitude. From the times right now, theres a reason elected republicans in washington have all been in hiding today, right . They have no idea what theyre supposed to say about this. They are all under their respective rocks at this point because how are they going to explain this to the American People, particularly when so many of them are going to the American People and saying, put me back in office alongside this president. The reason we have a modern expectation that every president will show the public their tax returns is because of nixon in 1973 when he was caught cheating on his taxes. Nixon was making 200,000 a year as president , but as the newspaper that got his tax returns put it in 1973, as the providence journalbulletin in rhode island put it, president nixon was paying in taxes at that time not what you would expect from a person making 200,000 a year. He was paying what you would expect from, quote, a wage earner with one exemption in the 7,000 a year income bracket. Nixon was making 200,000. He paid taxes like he was making 7,000. Nixon was found in that tax return that was anonymously mailed to that newspaper, nixon was found to have paid a federal tax bill in 1970 of 792. 81. Thats it . People were outraged. Thats ridiculous. Hes making 200,000 a year. He paid less than 800 in taxes while he was president . Nixon immediately tried to quell the damage. He released i think it was four years of his tax returns publicly, and that turned out not to be an awesome idea because he was found to have, in fact, have weaseled out of his taxes on a much grander scale. It turned out he actually owed almost half a Million Dollars in back taxes, which he did end up having to pay, and that ended up being just one more thing driving Richard Nixon absolutely nuts and driving Public Opinion of him through the floor in the middle of the watergate scandal. But that debacle from Richard Nixon weaseling out of his taxes, thats why president s have released their tax returns ever since. Because of that nixon debacle, we expect president s will not be allowed to hide stuff like that in their taxes anymore, that they will proactively show us their tax returns and let us see what theyve got to hide, if anything. Well, donald trump has broken that rule. If it werent for the New York Times and their new reporting, President Trump would still be hiding his taxes. And now thanks to this new reporting from the New York Times, we know President Trump paid even less than Richard Nixon did in federal income taxes. Even if you dont adjust for inflation between 1970 and now, nixon paid more. I mean, nixon paid, what was it, 780something . Now we know the year he was elected in 2016, trump paid 750 in federal income taxes. And, again, in 2017, that year he paid 750 in federal income taxes. Thats it. The Biden Campaign has already turned just that fact into a new ad contrasting what President Trump contributes to this country financially compared to what you contribute to this country financially, compared to a nurse, a teacher, a construction manager, a firefighter, basically anyone. And, you know, i think that the American People have learned enough about how the rich rig the systems of this country in their favor to know that people expect now that rich people find ways not to pay taxes. I think the American People broadly expect that rich people will make the system work for them and come up with complex tax avoidance or tax evasion schemes. But even though we have a sort of cynical expectation about that for rich people more broadly, what the times has just revealed is trump is doing something way different than even normal really rich people do. On average, we know what the richest 1 100 of 1 of americans pay in taxes each year now. If trump had even just paid that, what the other megarich people in the universe pay, he would have paid 400 million in taxes than what he actually paid. I mean, even compared to the way the megarich game the system, he is gaming that system like no one else. And the details are weird and damning and memorable. I mean, that year from which we got the two pages of his tax returns from 2005, that showed, youll recall, that he was paying a bunch of taxes. Turns out that year, 2005, was a huge anomaly in that he paid any taxes at all. In 11 out of the past 18 years, President Trump paid zero dollars in federal income taxes, zero in 11 out of the past 18 years. In two of those years, he paid only 750 for the whole year. He has radically, radically avoided paying taxes, and he has done it in part by declaring stuff as business expenses that are things that dont really seem like legit business expenses. For example, he deducted as a business expense the Legal Defense for don junior in the Mueller Investigation, which was mostly defending don junior over him meeting with russians during the campaign who were offering dirt on hillary clinton, courtesy of the russian government, that they wanted donald trump to be able to use against clinton in the campaign. Well, tax law says you cant deduct business expenses you cant deduct as business expenses things that expenses that were accrued based upon your participation in a political campaign. But that does appear to be the type of expense this was for don junior. He nevertheless deducted it as a business expense from his taxes. The president also deducted as a business expense from his taxes over 70,000 of hairstyling expenses for himself. Really . He also deducted almost 100,000 of hair and makeup expenses for his daughter, ivanka. He also deducted as a business expense consulting fees that he appears to have paid to his daughter, ivanka, even though consulting fees are supposed to go to independent consultants and not to your own employees and executives like ivanka trump was in the trump company. And as the times notes today, the irs has pretty aggressively pursued other companies for breaking those rules. The tax records reported on now by the times show that the president has taken millions of dollars from foreign sources since he has been in the white house, including money from turkey and from india and from the philippines. Taking money from foreign sources is not supposed to be allowed clearly under the emoluments clause of the constitution, but he has done that to the tune of millions of dollars. When it comes to money from russia, the tax documents show that trumps Miss Universe pageant, that pageant lost money regularly basically every year, except for that year when the pageant was moved to russia in 2013. Somewhat inexplicably for what was otherwise a moneylosing enterprise. In 2013, a russian billionaire close to the kremlin offered to pay millions of dollars to put that pageant on that year in moscow. That Russian Oligarch himself lost his shirt on the thing. He lost millions of dollars himself, but millions of his dollars did end up in Donald Trumps pocket, making what was otherwise an unprofitable enterprise quite profitable for donald trump that year that the Russian Oligarch was paying. Youll recall this is sort of a pattern with the president. The Russian Oligarch giving up millions of dollars so trump could have a big payday with that pageant, that happened not long after another Russian Oligarch appears to have wildly overpaid mr. Trump for a palm beach, florida, property that trump marked up by tens of millions of dollars without doing much to it at all. Thats the property that Michael Cohen says in his new book the president bragged was money in his pocket that had been personally approved by russian president vladimir putin, who trump believed controlled major spending by oligarchs abroad. But the big story here, the big takeaway is really two things. First its that the president has avoided paying taxes to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars over the years, and that is in part by declaring dubious business expenses. But its mostly by him telling the irs that his businesses are all massive failures. I mean, on paper in terms of what the president has reported to the irs, the Trump Corporation since the year 2000 has lost 134 million. According to the president , his golf courses since the year 2000 have collectively lost almost 316 million. He says that hes lost over 162 million on his doral golf course in florida. And his d. C. Hotel, in just the first two years of his presidency, the president told the irs that hotel has lost over 55 million. I mean, thats the first of the two big picture takeaways here that we might have guessed about how the president was conducting his business, but this shows it in black and white. He has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes by telling the irs that everything he touches fails, that all of his business dealings, all of his signature projects, his golf courses, his hotels and everything he tries to run with his name on it, it all has just failed catastrophically, and it all fails every year. Thats now in the record that has been exposed by the times. We can now see that in terms of the times account of his taxes. And we can see how that story hes been telling the irs diverges from what hes been telling us, the public. I mean, just look at 2018 alone. His Financial Disclosure from the white house, right, publicfacing document his Financial Disclosure from the white house for 2018 said that he made at least 435 million that year. Well, his tax records show that he lost 47. 4 million that year. Well, which is it . Did he