Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

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Paul Krugman: Trump’s Debt, His Future and Ours

The president — our chief law enforcement and national security official — could be facing huge liabilities. That’s chilling.

The bombshell New York Times report on Donald Trump’s tax returns is a remarkable feat of journalism. The team deserves special praise for making their findings comprehensible to general readers, and not getting lost in the details.

Yet like many other revelations in the Trump era, the tax news falls into the category of “shocking but not surprising.” Many observers had already surmised that Trump paid little or no taxes, that his claims of brilliant business success were a fiction, and that he is deep in debt. Now all of that is virtually confirmed. But what does it mean for America’s future?

Everyone will come at this question from their own angle. When I read the Times report, I quickly found myself thinking about … the theory of business capital structure. No, really.

For many people, no doubt, the main takeaway from the tax revelations will be “$750? Really?” The fact that Trump paid less in taxes than tens of millions of hard-working Americans struggling to make ends meet is an outrage. It’s also easy to explain in a few seconds, which is why it’s the theme of a quickly released ad from the Biden campaign.

Michelle Goldberg: Does Donald Trump Need a Bailout?

Maybe that’s why he sucks up to Putin.

In his new book “Rage,” Bob Woodward reports that Dan Coats, Donald Trump’s first director of national intelligence, was never able to shake his suspicions that Trump is in the pocket of President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Coats is obviously not alone — Trump’s obsequiousness toward the Russian strongman has been one of the enduring enigmas of his presidency. Even Trump’s natural affinity for autocrats doesn’t explain why Putin is one of the few men on earth whom the president of the United States treats as his better.

The New York Times’s blockbuster exposé of Trump’s taxes does not directly solve this mystery. The journalists Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire make clear that Trump’s taxes reveal no previously unreported financial link to Russia; the documents mostly “lack the specificity” required to do so. But the revelation of the gargantuan debt closing in on Trump offers one plausible motive for why the president constantly sucks up to Putin, even when doing so seems politically self-defeating.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, has said that Trump thinks Putin is the richest man in the world. And the American president, The Times’s reporting suggests, may need a bailout.

Amanda Marcotte: Biden should attack Trump as a massive, ludicrous failure — not just a tax cheat

Trump is no bold captain of industry: He’s a loser who kept afloat by selling ringtones and defrauding Granny

Using its agenda-setting powers for good instead of evil for once, the New York Times has released the second in a series of stories detailing exactly what kind of fraud Donald Trump is, using recently obtained copies of the tax returns the president has spent years desperately trying to hide.

This second one is a doozy, focusing as it does on how Trump, desperate for cash to prop up his failing empire, faked being a successful businessman on “The Apprentice.” Then, because he is unbelievably bad at business, Trump managed to burn through the $424.7 million windfall he “earned” from that show, leaving him apparently dead broke before he announced his presidential campaign in 2015.

Much attention has been paid to the revelation from the first article in this series that Trump is a promiscuous tax cheat who uses all sorts of shady strategies — paying his daughter Ivanka as a “consultant” to hide money from the IRS, for one — to keep his income tax bill at zero in most years.

But this second article focuses on what is likely a far more potent slam against Trump in the eyes of the voters he’ll need to win over if he wants to be re-elected in November: He is a comically terrible businessman. His real estate empire was kept on life support through ads with cartoon sheep and selling ringtones, as well multi-level marketing schemes and other ploys to defraud desperate people.

Eugene Robinson: Democrats need to put an expiration date on the Republican Senate

Defeating Trump is necessary. It’s not sufficient.

It is necessary, but not sufficient, to defeat President Trump in the coming election. Democrats must also take control of the Senate — and are deliciously close to that goal.

If there is anyone left who fails to grasp the importance of the Senate majority, they will be enlightened in the coming weeks, as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) rush Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett through her confirmation process. In doing so, they will cement a 6-to-3 conservative majority on the high court that is likely to warp our jurisprudence for decades.

That is power in action. Democrats may not be able to stop this outrage, but on Nov. 3 they can — and should — put a firm expiration date on the Republican Party’s power.

Nouriel Roubini: Why Joe Biden is better than Donald Trump for the US economy

It’s a myth that Republicans handle the economy better – US recessions almost always occur under the GOP

Joe Biden has consistently held a wide polling lead over US President Donald Trump ahead of November’s election. But, despite Trump’s botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic – a failure that has left the economy far weaker than it otherwise would have been – he has maintained a marginal edge on the question of which candidate would be better for the US economy. Thanks to Trump, a country with just 4% of the world’s population now accounts for more than 20% of total Covid-19 deaths – an utterly shameful outcome, given America’s advanced (albeit expensive) healthcare system.

The presumption that Republicans are better than Democrats at economic stewardship is a longstanding myth that must be debunked. In our 1997 book, Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy, the late (and great) Alberto Alesina and I showed that Democratic administrations tend to preside over faster growth, lower unemployment and stronger stock markets than Republican presidents do.

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Charles M. Blow: We Don’t Need Debates

Trump will just make a scene and lie. What’s in it for voters?

The first column I ever wrote was about the April 2008 Democratic presidential debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It took place in the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

The debate was a mess. [..]

Since then, I have covered many more presidential debates — sometimes writing about them, sometimes discussing them on television or social media. At one time, I was into the spectacle of it all as much as anyone else. I waited for the defining moments and the slip-ups, the best zingers and the worst flubs.

But debates have come to be about sport and sparring rather than a true comparison of the relative readiness of the candidates. They are too much theater, too little substance.

Robert Reich: Amid talk of civil war, America is already split – Trump Nation has seceded

The president thrives on division, speaks of ‘we’ and ‘them’ and encourages violence. No wonder we fear he won’t accept defeat

What is America really fighting over in the upcoming election? Not any particular issue. Not even Democrats versus Republicans. The central fight is over Donald J Trump.

Before Trump, most Americans weren’t especially passionate about politics. But Trump’s MO has been to force people to become passionate about him – to take fierce sides for or against. And he considers himself president only of the former, whom he calls “my people”.

Trump came to office with no agenda except to feed his monstrous ego. He has never fueled his base. His base has fueled him. Its adoration sustains him.

So does the antipathy of his detractors. Presidents usually try to appease their critics. Trump has gone out of his way to offend them. “I do bring rage out,” he unapologetically told Bob Woodward in 2016.

In this way, he has turned America into a gargantuan projection of his own pathological narcissism.

Amanda Marcotte: Forget “The Apprentice” — Trump’s taxes show he was really “The Biggest Loser”

Between Poppa Trump and Mark Burnett, Trump was gifted $840 million — but he may still owe as much as $1 billion

Donald Trump’s seemingly immovable approval numbers are a testament, above all other things, to the power of racism, and the way that 40 to 42% of Americans will stand by their man, no matter how bad things get, so long as he keeps hating the same people they hate. But that legendary floor of his — he has almost never dropped below 40%, or risen above 45% — is also a testament to the power of narrative fiction, especially of the televised variety.

During the 2016 Republican primary, polling showed that Trump supporters were bamboozled by “The Apprentice,” mistaking the fictional Trump of the “reality” TV show for the real Trump, a repeated business failure with a series of bankruptcies under his belt. To this day, about half of Americans still believe that Trump is a competent steward of the American economy, despite the worst downturn since the Great Depression, because they mistook a character he played on TV for the real thing. Trump has boosted this lie about his business acumen by concealing decades of his tax returns so that he could claim to be a successful billionaire without being fact-checked by his own accountants.

But now, after years of trying, the New York Times has successfully harpooned the white whale that journalists, prosecutors, activists and Democrats have been hunting for years: Donald Trump’s tax returns.

Unsurprisingly, the documents suggest Trump cheats on his taxes, as he cheats in every other aspect of life, from marriages to presidential elections. Perhaps more importantly, the documents show that Trump’s entire persona as a successful businessman isn’t just a lie, but the inverse of reality. If we’re going strictly on profit and loss, Donald Trump is the worst living businessman in America.

Catherine Rampell: Trump’s long-hidden tax returns make him look like a terrible businessman, or a cheat. Probably both.

Trump has about a half-billion dollars’ worth of motivation to stay in office four more years.

Richard Nixon famously said, “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.” That comment was not about the Watergate break-in, but rather, some funny business in his tax returns. Under public pressure, Nixon ultimately released those returns, revealing a major underpayment on his income taxes and creating a new norm for at least partial tax disclosure that all his successors complied with.

Until President Trump, that is.

And now it may be clear why. Bombshell reporting Sunday from the New York Times — based on the examination of thousands of personal and business tax records — suggests that Trump, like his disgraced predecessor, engaged in a lot of financial activity that also looks pretty crooked. [..]

Trump claimed no tax liability for so many years because, according to the documents reviewed by the Times, he sustained mindbogglingly huge, chronic losses. The magnitude of these reported losses suggests he has been a thoroughly incompetent businessman or has been cheating Uncle Sam.

Most likely both.

David Masciotra: The president wants you dead — and so do his friends and advisers. It’s that simple

It’s not adequate to say that Trump’s regime is stupid and incompetent. That’s true — but the malice runs deeper

The president of the United States wants you dead.

Throughout the dystopian horror of the past four years, critics of the Trump administration have speculated, with persuasive evidence and analysis, that Donald Trump and his gaggle of ghouls — Jared Kushner, Bill Barr, Stephen Miller, et al. — are both incompetent to prevent death and indifferent to the onslaught of death if the victims, whether they lose their lives in a largely preventable pandemic, a natural disaster caused by climate change, or at the hands of police or right-wing terrorists, are not white, rich and Republican.

Recent revelations should force Americans to consider an even darker reality, and gather insight into the malevolence of humanity that is typically accessible only in barbaric episodes of history and frightening stories of literature. The most powerful man in the federal government delights in the infliction of pain, misery and grief.