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President Donald Trump can’t decide if taxing the ultra rich is worth it.
In a Friday morning Truth Social post, the president wrote that “Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!”
“The problem with even a ‘TINY’ tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming,’Read my lips,’ the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder,” Trump wrote, referencing George H.W. Bush declaring, “Read my lips: no new taxes,” during the 1988 Republican National Convention.
The wishy-washy commentary comes just a few weeks after Trump told Time magazine that while he supported a tax hike for the rich, he was thinking about the potential political fallout.
“I actually love the concept, but I don’t want it to be used against me politically, because I’ve seen people lose elections for less, especially with the fake news,” he told the magazine. “The only reason I wouldn’t support it is because I saw [H.W.] Bush where they said, where he said ‘Read my lips’ and he lost an election. He would have lost it anyway, but he lost an election. He got beat up pretty good.”
Trump posted that Republicans should “probably not” raise taxes on the rich the morning after he reportedly instructed Republicans to bump up taxes on the ultra wealthy.
According to sources who spoke to The New York Times, the president’s proposal would add a new income bracket for individuals making over $2.5 million a year, and subject them to a 39.6 percent tax on income above that threshold. According to a separate report from The Washington Post, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has also floated placing individuals who make over $5 million a year in their own tax bracket.
The proposal is likely an attempt to assuage widespread public concern over the GOP’s current fiscal project, which proposes to make Trump’s 2017 tax cuts — which heavily favored wealthy Americans — permanent, and then paying for those same cuts by firing federal employees, slashing entitlements, and gutting other government programs. One source told the Times that the president believes a small tax hike for high earners could help keep Medicaid’s budget off of the chopping block.
Taxing the rich sounds great, but Trump is clearly conflicted about the matter, and so are Republicans in Congress. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told The Washington Post that while he was cool with it, “zero” or at most “maybe one or two” other Republicans would support such a proposal.
Last month, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he was “not in favor of raising the tax rates, because our party is the group that stands against that traditionally,” during a Fox News interview.
In his April interview with Time, Trump may have inadvertently given up the game. Yes it’s a tax hike, but a marginal one that rich people might be willing to absorb because it’s almost negligible.
“I would be honored to pay more, but I don’t want to be in a position where we lose an election because I was generous — but me, as a rich person, would not mind paying and you know, we’re talking about very little,” he said. “We’re talking about one point. It doesn’t make that much difference, and yet, I could just see somebody trying to bring that up as a subject, and, you know, say, ‘Oh, he raised taxes.’”
