"How broke is he?"
I usually do my utmost to avoid offering timely hot takes on the latest news, but in everything making the rounds today about the tax returns I haven’t yet seen something that merits mention: Michelle Wolf’s remarks at the 2018 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. I think it was Wolf who had the right combination of saying early and saying well that of all the absurdities of the administration the most salient is that the president, whose wealth he and his boosters describe to the rest of us as the source from which all other blessings flow, doesn’t actually have any money. I remember that in the days following the performance the president’s supporters’ pearl-clutching centered on Wolf purportedly having made fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ appearance - but of course this was disingenuous; a person’s choices in cosmetics aren’t part of their innate characteristics and Sanders’ style was contextual to the jokes the actual targets of which were Sanders’ use of her taxpayer-funded office to lie to America and the world (isn’t it amazing how jokes become funnier when analyzed structurally?). It was telling that in the whole news cycle kerfluffle no one even bothered trying to argue that Wolf was mistaken on her piece’s central thesis and that the president truly was wealthy.
When Mitt Romney proudly argued that it was right and just and virtuous that he paid the minimum tax that the law required him to pay it diminished my support for his candidacy because I did not feel that America’s tax laws were then (nor do I feel that they are now) right and just and virtuous, but I did not doubt that he had a lot of money and that he paid in tax the money that the law required him to pay; I don’t think anyone had any such doubt.
There’s a larger feeling going around that I’ve seen captured in the sentiment «when historians in the future analyze our time, the hardest aspect of it for them will be the overwhelming total obviousness of it all», and I mostly share that, in part because of work like Wolf’s. This particular routine I’d probably place on my top ten list for the decade: it’s not just funny; it’s indignant, furious, righteous, reasoned, insightful, and persuasive. It’s angry, and it’s the kind of «good anger» being put to productive use.
I just rewatched all twentyish minutes of it in full and I recommend the same for you. It’s dangerous to drop into the middle of a comedy routine without having been around for the build-up but for ease of citation purposes I’ll quietly mention that Wolf’s specific remarks about the president’s wealth begin at 5:14.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDbx1uArVOM