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In a raw cut of a non-airy 60 minutes Interview posted on President Donald Trump’s Facebook page on Thursday, Trump says China is America’s biggest foreign adversary. Although according to recent reports, he paid more than $ 100,000 in taxes to China around the same time that he paid little or no income tax in the United States.
Trump referred to China as an enemy and blamed the country for the coronavirus pandemic, during his interview with 60 minutes journalist Lesley Stahl. The interview with Stahl was posted on Trump’s Facebook page ahead of news shows aired Sunday.
“I would say China. They are an adversary. They are a competitor and they are an enemy in many ways,” Trump said after Stahl asked him who America’s biggest adversary is. “I think what happened was embarrassing. It should never have happened. They should never have allowed this plague to leave China and spread around the world to one hundred and eighty-eight countries. It should never have happened.”
Although Trump has condemned China for its response to the coronavirus, he paid the country $ 188,561 between 2013 and 2015 through a Chinese bank account controlled by his company Trump International Hotels Management LLC, according to a report released Tuesday by The New York Times.
The Chinese bank account is said to be one of three foreign accounts maintained by the president, with the other two being located in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
According to the TimesThe documents also showed that Trump paid no U.S. income taxes for 10 of the 15 years and only $ 750 in 2016 and 2017, the year he was elected president and the year he took office.
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Trump Organization attorney Alan Gartner told the Times that Trump opened a Chinese bank account “to pay local taxes” on business ventures he hoped to tap into in Asia.
“Agreements, transactions or other business activities never materialized and, since 2015, the office has been inactive,” Garten said. “Although the bank account remains open, it has never been used for any other purpose.”
Trump has blamed China for the COVID-19 pandemic and accused the country’s government of downplaying the severity of the outbreak from its epicenter in Wuhan. Yet the United States continues to host more coronavirus cases and deaths than any other country in the world.
Trump’s handling of the pandemic has been criticized by public health officials and government leaders who requested concise messages from the federal government on stay-at-home orders, masking mandates and social distancing requirements.
The United States became the country with the highest number of COVID-19 cases in late March, just a couple of weeks after the World Health Organization declared the virus a global pandemic.
As of Thursday afternoon, more than 8 million coronavirus cases and 222,000 deaths have been confirmed in the United States, according to data compiled by John Hopkins University.
