Sometimes we at Crooks and Liars have trouble writing up a video.
This is one of those times. Maybe it's because we've already done over 400 posts about Grover Norquist.
Maybe it's because he was completely discredited by Samantha Bee on The Daily Show (in 2012, mind you) as an overgrown 8th grader, and that should be the end of his "Tax Pledge" for all eternity.
Or maybe it's just that Grover Norquist has been the same smarmy 'tax cuts for billionaires' douchebag for so very long that we are not only tired of his failed ideology, we're to the point where any Grover Norquist video makes all of us want to punch a wall.
In any event, here he is, saying what Grover Norquist says, and being called out quite brilliantly as usual by the higher-tolerance-for-this-sh*t-than-we-have Paul Krugman.
Special kudos to Krugman for making Norquist admit that there actually was a Republican President between Saint Ronald Reagan and now. If you listened to Grover you'd think history's only Republican economy was St. Ronnie and his 4% growth recovery (which, by the way, was spurred by GOVERNMENT SPENDING and TAX INCREASES, but I digress).
Krugman also boils down the whole argument in just a few sentences:
KRUGMAN: I think the point is we actually know extremely well what to do. We know exactly what is needed and the problem is the people -- the ideology that Grover is giving here is what stands in the way. The fact that you'll have complete rigid adherence to that ideology, which has failed again and again and again, but nothing has changed, nothing has been learned from experience.
NORQUIST: Look at Reagan and Obama, and Reagan created more jobs and Reagan...
KRUGMAN: They've got to go back 35 years to a completely different situation. We had Bush, got all this stuff, none of it delivered. And it's kind of an amazing thing how Bush has become a nonperson.
But the money quote from this video appears at the 5:00 mark, where Grover says he really likes Trump's tax plan of reducing corporate taxes to 15%.
This is the drowning government in the bathtub dream for Grover. But again, the money quote:
KRUGMAN: Trump is completely incoherent on economic policy. I mean, you can find him on any given day supporting almost anything.
Well, he said he wanted to -- maybe he wanted to raise taxes on the rich, then he said he wanted to cut them. I mean, to actually try to suss out what Trump means, God knows.
NORQUIST: It's written down. And I think the proposal that he has -- getting rid of the death tax, getting rid of the AMT finally, taking the corporate and business takes to 15 percent...
He trusts Trump to stick to an imaginary 15% rate because It's. On. Paper.
Apparently Norquist was in a coma last month when Trump said all of his tax proposals would be subject to "negotiation."
Listen, Grover, even Trump doesn't trust Trump on taxes. Who is paying you to do so?
