i want to hand it over to chris for "cuomo prime time." chris? thank you, anderson. i am chris cuomo, and welcome to "prime time." breaking news, the best answer yet to why the president is hiding his taxes. when you see the years and the tears from investors in his gambits and maybe even a potential scam, it's hard to see how our president can brag about his business acumen. we have one of the reporters who broke the story. and we also have one of the oversight hawks in the house who's been fighting for the most recent taxes. where will democrats take the battle next? and senator mitch mcconnell has struck again. the master of disaster when it comes to trying to shut the door on democrats now says the probe is case closed. before we even hear from mueller? democratic leader schumer accuses him of aiding and abetting the russians. we'll debate. it's another big night. what do you say? let's get after it. all right. so the president has given a new

meaning to being a 1 percenter. his losses accounted for 1% of all losses in the country for one year according to newly obtained data from the "new york times." that year, 1991. as you see behind me, year after year the president appears to have lost more money than maybe any other individual taxpayer in america. there's a rub on that. a lot of corporations are c corp.s, they file and pay directly. he was a pass-through organization. it's privately held. so he's in a different bucket. but it's still a ton of losses. these should all be red. a decade in the red. why are they blue? deals he bragged about were disasters. and a new allegation that the president may have been front-running stocks in curious fashion to make up some of that loss. a very different narrative to us when he was running for election. >> i built a tremendous business. i filed my papers with the

federal election. they couldn't even believe it. there were so many of those guys back there. i built an unbelievable -- some of the greatest assets in the world. very little debt. tremendous cash flow. tremendous. >> cannot believe what he says. the new figures show over $1 billion in business losses. so bad our president paid no federal income tax for 8 of the 10 years we now know about from 1985 to 1994. let's bring in one of the reporters who broke the blockbuster story tonight. russ buettner. and we have david cay johnston, who himself obtained part of the president's 2005 tax return, an expert in tax law, teaches the same. both of you, welcome to "prime time." gentlemen, thank you. mr. buettner, man of the hour, appreciation. boy, i have to tell you, as a journalist, the scrubbing and cross-referencing you did on arcane data.

david cay knows this very well. boy, did you do a hell of a job on this. any kudos you get is well deserved. on reporting alone. forget about the outcome. the reporting is top-notch scrubbing. good for you. what do you want people to take from this? >> i think it kind of forces us to again redefine or reimagine what we think of donald trump, of president trump. and the sort of assertions he's made as to why his ideas matter, the value of what he built and maybe perhaps his integrity in some of these issues as well. you just see that over this period of time he's trying different things, they're not working, he gets bailed out by this brief flirtation with moving the stock market around a little bit, and then he has a big bubble of interest income somewhere that we can't explain either. and then he tries casinos and he tries an airline and none of it really works out and he builds this colossal record of failure over a decade. >> boy, there's so much in there. i don't know where to start to be honest. david, this is so overwhelming in reading it. i read through the piece twice to try to get it.

when you look at it, having seen the 2005 tax return, an excerpt of it, how do the two go together for you? >> well, this is entirely consistent with what i've been report on donald for 30 years. it's all a fraud. and ross buettner and suzanne craig, the other reporter on the story, are journalistic totos who have pulled back the kurt kane and revealed that the wizard is actually a con artist. >> i would have gone with dorothy or one of the big animals. i wouldn't have gone with the dog. i just want you to know. i think you're better than that little dog. but that's okay. people love pets. but david, what do you see? >> well, you know, donald has always claimed that he has these tremendous business deals. what this shows is it's nonsense. it's just made up by donald. he creates his own reality. and this shows that his claim of being the modern midas who everything he touches turns to gold. no, it turns to dross.

what he does say that is true is he had a lot of cash flow. when he created his only publicly traded company and ran it at least nominally for nine years, the investors were wiped out. the bond holders only collected pennies on the dollar but he got $82 million out of it. that's what he does. he reaches in like a vulture. he sucks something dry and leaves the vendors unpaid, sometimes the workers unpaid, ruins other people's businesses and yet is held out in the press as this great business genius. >> that's one of the headlines from this, russ. again, it's so dense. people have to read it. we'll be processing this for days. probably beyond as more taxes come out. but he claimed a billion dollars in losses. but most of the assets he didn't really own. just because it says trump and has a big price tag on it, the equity and the investors of different types of notes and paper and borrowing was pretty substantial. so he got to declare the losses even though he didn't own the entire underlying asset? >> that's one of the great

magical things in the tax code and david is an expert on this stuff. as a business owner with these pass-through entities, if you design a business that fails, you build too much costs into it and it can't support those costs, you can use those losses to write off any other types of income you might get like from selling stocks. >> you get all the losses. you don't have to share the losses the way you share the ownership? >> that's right. in this case it's even a little more magical because a lot of these losses are actually other people's money. this is bontholders' money and banks' money that he just didn't pay back and then did another sort of magical thing when -- usually the tax man would come and say if you have cancellation of debt that's in essence income for you and you're going to have to now pay income taxes on that money. he came up with another -- or his advisers came up with another scheme to convert some of that into equity in ways that were really pushing the boundaries and avoided the tax man at that point as well. >> i'm a puppy compared to you

guys. when i was at abc news, me, tim o'brien, who is at "the new york times," now he's at bloomberg of course. chris vlasto, who was the big senior there in charge of all investigations. and now they have that podcast he does. we did an investigation, david and russ, of what we could figure out about trump's empire. and we got into a situation with him because it was all private, this was in 2005 or 6, right in there, but it took us like a year. and we got to the point that because it's all private and he wouldn't give us taxes and we could only show different aspects of debt that he had to agree on his net worth. david, he insisted that the hudson yards alone, the west side yards, put his net worth at $5 billion at the time. we wound up just getting away from having to report it because we had no way to corroborate it. but is there any chance that he was worth anything near a billion dollars during this period that we know about into the 2000s? >> no. and in fact, one day i asked donald, what's your net worth? and that day he said 3 billion. and i looked at him and said i

don't believe you. and he was -- what? you know. and i said donald, you can't pay your bills. i'm just a reporter. i can pay all my bills as they come due. if you're really worth $3 billion you'd find a way to pay your bills. later that same day he told another reporter he was worth $5 billion. he just makes it up, chris. he just makes it up. >> now, here's a little bit of food for thought here and i want to keep getting into the weeds with you guys into what we've learned. russ, what do you say to the initial pushback of -- because everything's rorschach these days. right? everything gets looked at through the partisan lens. oh, i don't care, he's still got a lot of money. he has a lot more money than i'll ever have. he's still a huge business success. i don't care how you guys pick it apart. all those rich guys find a way to use the tax code like he did. what's your take on that? >> well, certainly for this era that just doesn't match. there's another data base that we compared the data we had on him that showed the extreme outliers of business people set p like him who declared losses.

and he was at the outer spect m spectaculspectrum of those year after year, either at the top number or second from the bottom. really a poor performance and that's remarkable. but he's had several sort of phases. and this is one of them. and it all sort of came collapsing down around him. he barely escaped through and he was still, as david can attest to and you too, chris, he was still really not doing very well when "the apprentice" went on the air in 2004 and then that created a whole new era where suddenly he didn't have to try to build things, he didn't have to try to build businesses that he could support with the cost structure he put into them, he could just rent the use of his name. and that's an incredibly easy thing to do. and that's what we don't know about, is how much money that's yielded. >> irony n y that the hype ende paying off for him in the way business acumen never did. what was the name of that guy who gave him the huge break at nbc? what was his name?

oh, yeah. my boss, jeff zucker. that's who it was. let's take a break. this warrants a second block if you guys will stay, please. because russ raises -- and his -- and craig, suzanne craig, his writing partner on this, his reporting partner, they raise questions about what the president was doing to make up for the losses in the stock game. now, the president never talks about dealing in stocks. he always shuns that as dirty business, not real business like he was in. and a certain number of income that just doesn't make sense. both of these could have much deeper implications than just an attack on his ego. next. fact is, every insurance company hopes you drive safely.

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back with the breaking news and one of the people that brought it to us from the "new york times." they've gotten president trump's tax records for a decade in the '80s up into the '90s. they show a lot of reasons this president doesn't want to show you his taxes from now or then or ever. "times" reporter russ buettner worked with -- is it suzanne craig, right? >> yes. >> pulitzer winner. and investigative journalist david cay johnston, also had some of trump's 2005 taxes sent to him. he's been reporting on this for many years. vindicated in part by the reporting from the "new york times" today. so russ, two things. one, i am not familiar with the

president as a stock investor or a front runner of stocks. you put it in the piece. how sure are you of it and what does it say to you? >> i don't think it's news to david or to neil barski or some other people who covered president trump in the 1980s. there was a brief period where he seems to have learned that he could just talk about buying a company. he would buy a significant investment in a company with a loan from a broker at bear stearns and then make a public comment or leak a public comment that he might take it over. the stock would rise and he would sell and that lasted a couple of years before investors realized he never seemed to be following through. those trades were documented at the time by casino regulators in new jersey who were very concerned about his finances because they were worried all his casinos were going to go under. >> david, what are you al how'd to do and not allowed to do when you front-run a stock?

>> well, there are rather severe rules here about misleading investors. the fundamental rule is that any material fact that would make someone decide to buy, sell or avoid or hold a stock has to be disclosed. but trump was part of a whole generation of people doing what was called not blackmailing companies but greenmailing them. and he got two of his casino competitors to buy the stock he had bought with borrowed money back at a premium to make him go away. hence greenmail. >> and how about just the idea of saying yeah, i bought this position because i'm going to buy all of it, i'm going to take it over, then he sells it on the sneak, makes a profit, doesn't tell anybody that part of the story? is that okay? is that just about bad ethics and not illegality? >> well, it is a criminal violation of the law, but you have to have enforcement and we make very little effort in this country to enforce those laws on a criminal level. >> even there he wound up getting bit in the behind. right, russ? didn't he wind up holding something a little too long or the market caught up with him and he took a loss? >> he did.

ultimately, that sort of ran its course. by the time he invested in i think it was american airlines toward the end of that cycle in 1989 or 1990 the market was sort of on to the fact that he was never really following through with this. and the stock went up initially and then it went back down. he didn't sell in time. he lost i think $34 million on that. and his father actually, who had started following him into some of these trades, as we documented in october, also lost a little bit of money on that as well. and then there was no point anymore. the game was sort of over. >> and the income that you cite in that one year, you're puzzled by it. it's interesting. why is it so vex you for you, that one number? >> it's really striking. it's $52 million. even at the junk bond rates at the time you would have to have about $375 million invested to get that kind of return in one year. and the casino commission as i mentioned before and other auditors were quite up in donald trump's affairs at that time.

and during that era they said he had, depending on the month, between 2$2 million and $100 million total in liquid cash he could use. you can't get 50 million nasdaq interest even from $100 million in one year. so it really is just a striking mystery. >> where does that go for you? >> i don't know. i've talked to former sort of auditors and investigators. >> could it have anything to do with his dad? i know in the earlier reporting that the "new york times" broke that the idea of a self-made man that the president sold is really just that he made that story up by himself. but it was his father's money that was not just starting him but boosting him along his false from grace from time to time. is there anything there? >> you're thinking just like we were, chris. the first thing we did was check the banking records and the general ledgers that we have from his father's businesses during those very years. and there was no sign of it. there was money changing hands that we documented in october's

story, but this doesn't show up anywhere in there at all. >> look, this is going to be digested for days. russ, let me put in my ask early. i'm going to need you to come back as we start getting through this, we need to understand it in context, please come back. but congratulations to you. in this business the assumption is you would be jealous that somebody else did it. not me. i'm proud. failing "new york times"? read this piece today. you can't have journalism done better than this. i don't care who it's about or what it's about. just look at the methodology they take you through in the piece. it's why people get into journalism. russ, thank you very much. david cay, you are always value added. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> for days people are going to be processing this story. for days. take a look. i'm not saying it's the end of the president. don't be so fatalistic and extreme about everything. it's just what this president has said about who he is. you now have a way to look at it and see what's true and what isn't. now, coming up, we have a key democrat on the powerful ways and means committee. they're looking for the taxes in

recent history. what does this reporting mean to him? what does this situation mean in terms of what the democrats need to do? also another situation that must be exposed. senator mitch mcconnell declares the russia probe closed today. this is the latest in a string of efforts to stifle democracy. we're going to show you what he's done before and what he's trying to do now. the height of hypocrisy, must be exposed. let's do it next. welcome to our lounge. enjoy your stay. thanks very much. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ find calm in over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide. it's another way we've got your back. the business platinum card from american express. don't do business without it.

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this "new york times" reporting about trump's taxes

from the '80s and '90s is huge. but we can't lose sight of things that happen right under our nose that really matter. for example, it's the final indication that it is all hands on deck to clear this president from any wrongdoing. listen to this. >> the special counsel's finding is clear, case closed. case closed. >> must be nice if you say it twice. senator mitch mcconnell with his signature naked play for advantage. he knows by definition mueller didn't close the case on obstruction. and he didn't even mention it. he would certainly say differently, mr. mueller, and certainly mr. mcconnell if you switched the r to a d next to this president's name. if you did that, then senator mcconnell would say things like this. "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for president obama to be a one-term president." do you remember that? all-out opposition. >> some have said it was

indelicate of me to suggest that our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny president obama a second term. >> naked play of advantage. the same man who now laments our paralyzing partisanship and wants us to move on. the same one who refused a vote on a scotus nominee and was proud of it, vowed to punish democrats for using the nuclear option. remember? >> you'll regret this and you may regret it a lot sooner than you think. >> and you know what? they were wrong and he was right, and he's kept that vow by making the job of naming judges more contentious than ever. yet he sees no problem indignantly calling on democrats to be quiet and get back to work. >> there are serious issues the american people need us to tackle. there's more progress for middle class families we need to deliver. >> do something. senator mcconnell spoke for more

than 17 minutes on this. we all watched it. he never once mentioned the 10 credible episodes of obstruction of justice contained in the mueller report. case closed? in other words, he ignored the entire second volume of the report. instead offering a version of events where democrats are playing into the hands of putin. absolutely zero shame in his game. know that. ignoring the monumental embarrassment of what this president said in helsinki. >> i have president putin. he just said it's not russia. i will say this. i don't see any reason why it would be. >> remember the white house then saying oh, no, he said wouldn't. please. and actually admitting laughing our president did with the foreign foe about the probe into putin's diabolical deeds just this past week. >> we discussed and he actually sort of smiled. >> mcconnell ignores it all and

of course mr. putin smiles. his adversary not only wilts from confrontation, he denies russia's interference as much as putin does. but keep in mind, potus isn't the only big-time gop-er to ignore interference. listen to this. >> there's been little interest in the steps this administration has taken to make russia pay for its interference. and this administration has taken the problem head on. >> really? not only has the administration blocked bipartisan efforts in the senate to guard our elections but this idea is especially ironic. very rich. coming from this man in particular. why? well, for all that the president says about then president obama not acting fast enough on interference back in 2016 -- fair criticism, by the way -- but what he leaves out is that one reason the administration dragged its feet was senator mitch mcconnell. when president obama went to him to have the move be from both sides so it wouldn't look

partisan, he refused action. and just like with so much, we now have to wonder, why did he do that back then? all right. so the question now is will democrats get what they want in their fight for the truth? a congressman not only taking on republicans, he's taking on his own party to step it up. what's his plan? what do you think matters? what should matter to you? next. ♪ ♪ run with us. on a john deere z500 series mower. built to mow better, faster. because sometimes... when you take a look around... you notice... your grass is long... your time is short... and there's no turning back. ♪ ♪ nothing runs like a deere™. run with us. visit your john deere dealer today, to test drive a z500 or z700 series ztrak™ mower. but i'm more than a number. when i'm not teaching,

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new reporting from the "new york times" is at least one indication why the president is a hard no on handing over any of his recent taxes. he does not like the story it is going to tell. at the same time, house ways and means chairman richard neal has a job to do and is meeting with counsel to consider the next step to do the oversight, which includes the taxes. a member of this committee wants to get tough with the president. he is democrat lloyd doggett here to make his case. welcome to the show, sir. >> thank you, chris. >> first, "the new york times." what's your takeaway? >> it's shocking. you know, the president's

demonstrated that he's a loser and not just any loser, he's the biggest loser as far as individual taxpayers in that period of anybody in america. knocking out the competition in some years almost 2-1. it does raise another question as well, how does someone who is such a big loser eventually get bailed out by a foreign bank? what other kind of money from abroad was floating in to keep him afloat? so there are many questions out there. these were older tax returns. it certainly demonstrates another reason why we need the more recent returns. >> obviously in the 2000s he got the gift of that reality show. and in fairness to him he wound up doing it the right way. it became a big hit. and he got tons of cash flow, which i'm sure helped him. and at some point we're going to know that story. especially if you guys do your job and win in court. >> indeed. >> why do you think you'll win in court? the fight is pretty simple. the statute is very clear, but it's never been used this way. so it's untested. they'll say it's not real

oversight, this is a political attack, you have no reason to get the taxes, you could just call the irs and say did you audit the guy or not. you don't need the taxes. >> well, we do need to know how this audit function operated. we have the history of president richard nixon, who was actually praised by the internal revenue service publicly but when we really got into it our predecessors on the committee at that time to look at his returns, it turned out he owed a significant amount of money. in unpaid taxes. this statute as you know, almost 100 years old, could not be clearer. he shall means shall. and you don't need a law firm, a stack of lawyers including his new personal attorney bob barr, to advise about these things. this statute is clear. i think that chairman neal can either seek to enforce the statute without a subpoena, use a subpoena, or we have the possibility of holding the secretary or the irs commissioner in contempt.

>> now, you are one of the few democrats who's not just saying hey, it's wrong for the republicans or the white house to stymie our oversight. you're on the democrats as well. you believe they're playing too passive. what do you want to see? >> well, i think that we're informed now by the president's new policy of obstruction today, obstruction yesterday, obstruction forever. he doesn't want anyone to talk. he doesn't want any documents produced. he creates a void with secrecy that he fills with more and more lies. and so what i want is for us to recognize that we're under new conditions. this is not a time for timidity. we need to be forceful. we need to use every tool. he seems to be almost begging for impeachment. i don't think it's time to go there at this point but i do think it's important to use all of our powers, one of which is the inherent power of contempt. >> oh, yeah. inherent contempt, which is what?

>> what it means as recognized by the united states supreme court in the 19th century is that the congress can on its own part issue a subpoena and enforce that subpoena through arrest or through fines. and i think we need to be prepared to do both. >> you don't want to throw the a.g. in cuffs, though, right? you know that that would cause rancor and division that we certainly would have a hard time bearing in this current climate. >> all i want is for the attorney general to realize he has a responsibility to the public, not just as a personal attorney of mr. trump, and to comply with the law. so if we have a lawless attorney general or a lawless secretary of the treasury or some other official, it is our responsibility as a co-equal branch of government to hold them accountable. >> i hear you -- >> i don't want to throw him in jail but i'm ready to do so. >> i hear you on that, congressman. i'm of two minds of this. i've changed what i've been arguing in the closing argument about this. originally i was like i just

don't see the percentage for you guys. i don't see where it gets you as democrats. but i now understand there's a difference between overreach and oversight. but this is a question that many are concerned about in this country. look at these poll numbers that we have here about how people feel on this. the idea of how much is too much. 44% already says that you're pushing too much on investigating the president. right amount versus too little gets to you 53%. you're 53-44 if you want to look at it that way. you can even argue i laid those stats out deceptively to weigh them against you. putting that aside, are you worried it's going to be too much? >> i think this is part of president trump's roller strategy, by denying, by building a huge stonewall, by denying anything, any reaching out we do to get the truth is viewed as an overreach and it's promoted by him as an overreach. >> well, that's what pelosi said. right? pelosi said today that she believes that the president is

go goading, g-o-a-d-i-n-g, pushing you guys, taunting you to impeach him. do you believe that? >> i think he is. we see impeachment mentioned by all of his supporters, his enablers here in congress, as well as by him. that doesn't mean we shouldn't consider doing that if there are no other alternatives but i think this inherent power of contempt which would involve perhaps our contracting with the jail, perhaps adding some security personnel to do an arrest, not because we want to arrest or to jail someone but because we realize we have to show we're serious about this. we're not just going to go on through the courts and let them run out the clock. chris, you know as a lawyer yourself, i served for a time as a texas supreme court justice -- >> yes, sir. >> the appellate process can go on and on and on with hearings and briefing schedules and rehearings. we can't let this administration run out the clock on the truth. the american people need to know

that. and also from my background as a judge i'm very concerned not just about this president but about precedent. the precedent we are setting for another power-hungry president who would reach out and grab for more. president trump, when he makes these outrageous maneuvers, when he offers his bigoted statements and republicans are silent and democrats are timid, he's encouraged to grab for a little more. and i'm concerned about the erosion of our democracy by his conduct. >> it is interesting. i mean, that you see the timidity of your own side as a factor in this. it will be interesting to see what kind of adjustment there is. let me ask you about a little look into our potential future. investigating the investigators. we both know that i.g. reports, inspector general reports, rarely come back showing nothing of any suspicion on what they've been looking at. there may be no referral certainly for criminal prosecution or follow-up, but the idea that they'll have nothing to work on about the surveillance process that took place during that 2016, i think

you'd agree with me congressman, certainly understanding the process as a former judge on the state level, there's a good chance they'll have something. now, christopher wray today -- do we have sound of it now? so christopher wray today said in a senate hearing he has no proof that there was spying done. in response i believe to jean shaheen. what does that mean to you in terms of what we need to look at going forward? >> well, it means that bob barr used the term "spying" because it's a loaded term for what appeared to be a court-approved investigation that was underway and did not involve spying and -- >> do you believe it was only based on the dossier information that was bought by clinton from the russians? fruit of the poisonous tree? >> no, i don't. but i believe we should see the inspector general's report before making a final decision and i don't think there's

justification for launching a big, new distracting investigation when we have the facts right now and the president trying to stop bob mueller from coming here to explain them. >> do you think he can do that? >> well, i think he can. i don't think he'll be partisan in anyway. i think everything the judiciary committee or the intelligence committee does with him needs to be centered on the law and his responsibility -- >> understood. but do you think the president will block him? as long as he's working for the d.o.j., he's working for bill barr, bill barr could say no. >> he could and he would be reversing himself as he has reversed himself and as the president does on a -- >> he said he had no objection. what about the president then has an objection and he says the president doesn't want him to do it so he's not going to do it. >> that's entirely possible. but of course i don't think that mr. mueller will be forever a justice department employee, and i would hope when he completes his responsibilities, which should be soon, that if he's blocked by the president and his

hand-picked lawyer, mr. barr, that mr. mueller will then be able to testify before our committees. >> congressman, thank you so much for weighing in on these matters of great importance in a time-sensitive way. thank you very much. >> thank you, chris. >> lloyd doggett, texas, democrat. thank you, sir. the world is warming. you know. that's what science tells you. the scientists look at what's happening in the arctic, they see a flashing red light. the trump administration, they see green. less ice, more money. you've got to hear it to believe it. next. (music throughout)

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there really is no point in debating the science. we know the science. the warnings are clear from scientists. there are dire consequences because of human-caused climate change. now, on monday our secretary of state mike pompeo seemed to highlight the upside of this tremendous down side. >> in sea ice, they're opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade. arctic sea lanes could come before the -- could come the 21st century suez and panama canals. >> look, the good news is he seemed like he was reading those words.

maybe he didn't write them. maybe this is just some administration message that is being put out and we shouldn't tarnish mike pompeo. but yes, he did say them. here's the reality. the arctic is melting. we know that. the secretary of state apparently knows it too. but not once in that address before the arctic council did he use the words "climate change." why stay mum on what is obvious? especially when you have acknowledged it before, albeit reluctantly. listen. >> i also believe the climate is changing. that there's a warming taking place. i'm happy to concede that there is likely a human component to that. >> concede? let's bring in d. lemon. why do you have to concede? it's like conceding that two plus two is four. why have you got to concede? >> well, it makes a whole point of what we have been discussing. the breaking news in the "new york times" is that this administration and some people will do anything to create a narrative about what they want.

he think it's fake. they say it's fake because it doesn't behoove them. because they want to make excuses for things. ultimately because they want to be in power and prove themselves right even though it's not. let me just give you the facts. and this is just the world scientists -- you gave some of them. but here's what's concerning to me. "climate change and pollution are the main drivers of species loss and are threatening 40% of amphibians, 30% of coral and a third of marine mammals with extinction." again, that is according to a report monday by major scientists throughout the world. it comes just a couple -- just what, a few months after the u.n. did a similar report that showed similar results. so i went to catholic school. they taught me about religion. they taught me about, you know, beliefs and conspiracy theories. but they also taught me logic and science and mathematics. and you have to weigh the two. and they taught me to believe in those things. science above all else.

that's how we got here. >> absolutely. you know what i believe in? the lorax. did you ever read that book? the seuss book. where they start taking all the trees and start it's a dark and dismal place until they find one and they have to regenerate. and that's the thing. the temperature gets hot and ice melts. you see opportunity but the melting ice creates more warm temperatures and more melting and it's cyclical and something has to be done to stop it. and you know what? you can find opportunity in that too. that there's opportunity in the changeses that are necessary. that's the tragedy of hearing this backward thinking from someone that we know is intelligent. i don't know why the secretary of state is on that message, but he's a smarter one. >> you were reading "the lorax."

i was wearing shel silverstein. >> "the giving tree"? >> "the giving tree." i was also reading "moby dick." remember all the consternation about a couple years ago happening around shootings and killings of unarmed black folks in this country? it's still going on, but there was more talk about it. this president was in an office. the news wasn't consumed by politics. sandra bland, remember her, she died in waller county in texas? there is new cell phone video from her perspective. it shows a different perspective on what happened and we'll break that down, coming up. and we'll tell you about the taxes as well, don't forget about that. >> you look like an accountant

tonight. i like the glasses. would you have that guy do your taxes? no way. unless you're trump. how trump can settle the storm over his taxes. maybe the president will see this story from the "new york times" as an opportunity. next. welcome to our lounge. enjoy your stay. thanks very much. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ find calm in over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide. it's another way we've got your back. the business platinum card from american express. don't do business without it. my dream car. it turns out, they want me to start next month. she can stay with you to finish her senior year. things will be tight but, we can make this work. ♪ now...

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it's a now there's one store that connects your life like never before store. the xfinity store is here. and it's simple, easy, awesome. now, i am not one to offer advice let alone to the most powerful man in the world. but if your name were donald john trump, now would be the time to release your taxes, like right now. the argument? well, practically. new york is about to vote on the release of your tax returns, which is an echo of the federal ones, as you know, and your blue states like new york did not make you wildly popular. a fight with congress does not bode well for you in the courts. even if you get over that hurdle, it turns out 25 states

are working on laws in their states that shows that presidential candidates on the ballots in their states to show their tax returns. i haven't heard of an unalleged audit exception yet, so that's not likely. it's only possible if you empower the release of your taxes. the "new york times" story raises legit questions about stock manipulation, lies about your income, lies about your wealth, curious income reporting on interest. none of that is good for your brand or your credibility. some of it would have been softened if you were explaining what people would find. now, i get the reason you don't want to release the taxes. it's because you know what they do and do not show and you don't like the story, i get it. i get it better than most. first, i investigated your net worth with a talented team at abc news. remember back in 2005, remember you were on the phone with chris vlasto, remember he kept yelling

at us, the investigative guru over there? you insisted you were worth billions but you wouldn't give us real proof and we could only find proof of debt? remember the letter from your lawyer that sounded a lot like you damning you back to the womb for getting your worth wrong? it was right then, even more right now. the second reason is you and i share more common history. we were both given huge breaks by jeff zooker, chairman of warner media news and sports and president of cnn worldwide. looking at the reporting of your taxes from the '80s and '90s and the snapshots we got from the early 2000s, my guess is zooker giving you that reality show in 2004, that changed your reality. you went from being 1% of all losses reported for individual taxpayers to the tv star who was depicted as the ultimate top 1 percent-er.

i'm sure you don't like this narrative, but the only way is to show your returns. at a minimum, the truth will come out on your own terms. there's something to respect in that. at the end of the day, isn't that why you inflated your assets? but if you man up and say this has gone too far and it's not fair, here is the information, here are the taxes. and along with it, push for a law that makes it a federal requirement for all to show taxes in a run for the white house, and then a wrath of tax fixes to close the gaping hole that you exploited in grotesque fashion. now, that would take up some headlines and get you at least a pinch of respect for some of those that are now looking on and seeing someone who is clearly not who you told us you were. that's my argument for tonight. thank you for watching. we have big breaking news. let's get to "cnn tonight" with d. lemon right now. >> someone is going to be mad at you.

you just dropped a truth bomb. >> truth bomb. >> he's not going to like the jeff part, even though we know it's true. jeff made him and helped him and now he hates jeff. so he should be -- >> i don't know that the president hates anybody. >> oh, really? for real, for real? he should be in a debt -- he owes a debt of gratitude to him. >> i think there is a case where that could be made, but i don't know if there is real animus. you never know what goes through the mind and heart of a man. is that your signed copy? >> it is signed but it's not to me. it's to a member of my staff. i think you bring up very interesting points. i think this shows what -- how the wool was pulled over america's eyes. and, listen, that's not the reason that democrats want his taxes, and that's not the reason