What Donald Trump's 1.2 billion dollar loss between 1985-1994 really says

New York Times’s bombshell scoop on Trump’s tax returns from 1985-1994 raises various issues. The article shows that Trump was in the red for each of those ten years with an overall loss of 1.2 billion dollars, more than any other taxpayer in the country. What this revelation points to is the following:  

1. Such consistent loses show that the president was not a savvy businessman who made untold millions of honest dollars, as he purported to be during the presidential campaign. His “Art of the Deal” was the work of a snake oil salesman.

2. If Trump incurred such heavy losses, where was he getting all his money from. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston, who has written extensively on Trump over many years, told Amy Goodman that he is convinced that Trump was engaged in highly illicit business activity: https://www.democracynow.org/2019/5/8/billion_dollar_loser_nyt_report_on

3. Trump tweeted 7:00 AM this morning that it is common that real estate businesspeople manipulate the depreciation of their holdings in order to minimize tax payment. Actually, Johnston confirmed this to be the case. So what does this say about our tax system? If this is such a well-known practice involving massive write-offs by real-estate moguls who are earning millions, then the U.S. tax system is structurally flawed. This is a scandal and it’s not just about Trump.