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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Just another sleepy few days, if not much going on, since we last spoke. I was off yesterday for Yom Kippur, one day of atoning for a whole year worth of sins. It's a pretty good deal actually. Just since Friday, we have a new Supreme Court nominee, and The New York Times has more than 15 years of data from President Trump's tax returns, and oh, by the way, there will be a presidential debate tonight.

Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker, in his satire column, published this fake headline, "Trump plans to use debate to deduct Biden as a dependent. Trump would explain to the IRS that the reason Joe is doing so well in the polls is that people hate me. That means, he is totally dependent on me." To be clear, as Borowitz always is, that is satire not real, but the line these days can be blurry as with many things in the real-life tax returns, like deducting part of Ivanka's pay as an outside consultant fee even though she was a full-time employee of Trump's company.

The world, last night, officially hit one million coronavirus deaths. The US has 206,000 of them. We have 4% of the world's population and more than 20% of the world's deaths. We'll talk more later in the show about who lives, who dies, and who cares. There are also some spikes in new cases in parts of the New York City area now, and we'll have the City Councilman Mark Treyger from one of those Brooklyn zip codes later in the show.

We'll also have Andrew Weissman today, a lead investigator, as some of you know from the Robert Mueller team and from the Justice Department for many years, whose specialties include financial fraud. We'll get Andrew Weissman's take on Trump's tax returns and Russia. With me now, POLITICO White House Correspondent Nancy Cook. She has previously been a healthcare reporter for POLITICO, relevant with the Affordable Care Act becoming one of the main battlegrounds in the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation battle. Nancy used to work for Fast Company, covering tax and business reporting, so lucky us with some tax expertise that she is here today. Thanks for coming on, Nancy. Welcome back to WNYC.

Nancy Cook: Oh, thanks for having me, Brian. I love your show.

Brian: Thank you. Your latest article out this morning is called, "Trump's tax troubles couldn't have come at a worse time." Why do you say that?

Nancy: Well, they're coming in just at a moment when a lot of people feel like this is one of the last few times when Trump can really pull it together and try to surpass Biden in the polls and in these key battleground states, and what keeps happening to him is there are just bad headlines, bad events, over and over again for him. He hasn't been able to settle on a message for Biden, and people are already starting to vote early. They're starting to vote via mail-in ballots. I think people around the president are very worried that time is running out for him to establish any type of lead over by Biden.

Brian: You suggest the Trump tax issue could neutralize any attack Trump makes on Hunter Biden making a lot of money from Ukrainian and Chinese interests, why would it do that?

Nancy: That's definitely what the Biden campaign is hoping. The president had really been planning for a long time to try to make Hunter Biden a key feature of this debate and really go after Biden for those sorts of activities, but the Biden people yesterday were very excited by the Trump tax story because they felt like it was a way that they could really talk with the average voter about the way that Trump has tried to use the government to his own advantage, paying only $750 in taxes in the year 2017. I think that they will also talk about all the money that he's going to owe over the next few years and how that could be a potential national security risk if he is re-elected president.

Brian: When Trump was running in 2016, obviously, the Democrats didn't have this data yet, but still, critics question Trump's aggressive use of tax deductions, which was known as a general thing, and he said it just shows he's smart about the tax code. He used the word smart. Doesn't everyone use whatever deductions the tax system allows? He hasn't been charged with anything illegal. Do you expect to hear more of that kind of defense in the debate tonight? If Trump uses that defense, how does Biden frame it as a big deal for voters?

Nancy: I think that how Biden frames it as a big deal for voters is basically by talking about, and we saw this in the ad that he already cut, how nurses, construction workers, students, people making $30,000 a year are paying more in taxes, most likely, than President Trump. I think that it will be a way for the Biden campaign to really talk about the effect of these loopholes and the effect of President Trump.

Also, I think they're going to try to paint him as a con man, someone who for years has tried to act like he's a very wealthy successful businessman when, in fact, part of that success or the mirage of success comes from minimizing his tax bill, taking on a lot of debt, and not necessarily knowing how that's always going to be paid. A lot of times, historically, the president was bailed out by his father's own success, not his own. I think the Biden campaign will definitely seize on that in the debate and really get into it.

The Trump campaign yesterday, when I talked to people around the president and on the campaign, they really were all over the map on how to talk about the tax issue. The president in his first debate in 2016 with Hillary Clinton, she brought up this very issue that she had a hunch that he had a low tax bill, and he said that he was smart, but yesterday, the campaign, they couldn't really figure out how to talk about it. They were saying-- Some people are saying, "Oh, he's smart and he minimized his tax bill illegally." The president himself on Twitter was saying, "Well, it's actually not true. I paid millions of dollars."

Some people tried to paint this as a scheme on the part of the Democrats to have negative information come out before the debate, but it was another instance in which the Trump campaign was really caught flat-footed by a bad headline, and they've really been struggling to figure out how to respond to it. I'll be curious to see what message they alight on for tonight.

Brian: Listeners, do you care about Trump's tax information as published by The New York Times? If so, why? If not, why not? We can also take questions for Nancy Cook from POLITICO on comments about the Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court nomination. Take your comments or go ahead and pregame tonight's debate, if you want to do that. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or tweet a question or comment @brianlehrer.

Somebody already thinks he's a comedian out there. Nancy, I quoted Borowitz doing a little satire on this. You know how Trump always likes to say or his people like to say, "Trump owns the libs," right? He's always provoking liberals and he gets them stuck in their own morass by provoking them. "Trump owns the libs." Listener Eddie tweets, "Trump is so broke, he can only afford to rent the libs."

Nancy: [laughs] Good one.

Brian: Thank you, Eddie Brandon, on Twitter. Here's what Biden said on MSNBC this weekend about preparing to debate Donald Trump, in general.

Joe Biden: It is going to be difficult. My guess is it's going to be just straight attack. They're going to be mostly personal. That's the only thing he knows how to do. He doesn't know how to debate the facts because he's not that smart. He doesn't know that many facts.

Brian: There were so many examples of what Biden is talking about there, the personal attacks. One is this famous moment from 2016 when Hillary Clinton was questioning Trump's fitness to be in charge of the legal system.

Hillary Clinton: It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.

President Trump: Because you'd be in jail.

Moderator: Secretary Clinton--

[applause]

Brian: Obviously, nobody charged her with anything. She's not in jail. She's not in danger of going to jail. What's the 2020 version of that, and how do you think Biden would be prepping for that kind of thing?

Nancy: That's a great question. I feel like the president actually has had a very hard time with this. He has had a very hard time defining Biden. He's tried a bunch of things like Sleepy Joe, Lyin' Hidin' Biden, but he has had a very hard time settling on a message for Biden and so has his campaign. I think that that has been a real contrast with 2016, when basically Trump was able to conjure up a lot of negative ways to define Hillary Clinton.

Also, if you remember during the Republican Primary in 2016, he just [unintelligible 00:10:00] with the bunch of his rivals by making up catchy names for them, Low Energy Jeb Bush, and he came up with all these names that stuck in and caricature the people in some way, but he hasn't been able to do that with Biden. I think the biggest challenge for Biden tonight is to basically present Trump with facts about his own record and the way he's handled things like the coronavirus. That's going to be a key thing that the Biden campaign does.

Then, the president tells lies all the time or gives inaccurate information. He said that yesterday when he was the only president who ever gave up his presidential salary. That's not true. I feel like the president will be doing that a lot during the debate, and it will be up to Biden to respond to it and fact-check it, but also, be able to get his own points in. I think that that's just a huge trick when you're dealing with Trump. He's not afraid to lie and put things out there, and it can be really hard for opponents to figure out how to respond.

Brian: By the way, listeners, we will have a debate here on WNYC. It's at nine o'clock tonight, pretty late to start. I guess that makes it six o'clock on the West Coast. They hope that people will be home from work and stuff like that. Nine o'clock, we have live coverage as the debate starts here on WNYC, followed by analysis from NPR afterwards. You can get your debate audio here, if that is how you want to get it. Earl in New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Earl. Earl, are you there?

Earl: How you doing?

Brian: Hi.

Earl: I'm here. Hi there, how are you?

Brian: Good. How are you doing?

Earl: You hear me?

Brian: You want to say something about the tax returns?

Earl: Well, his tax-- Everybody has tax returns. I'm a painful Republican. I don't even know what to call it. I'm like a person, a Republican in the capitalist aspect. I'm a small businessman, and I believe labor should be paid well. I do get some crazy deductions. I just bought a truck, and they're like, "You could deduct the whole thing," and I would have reduced my tax burden. The government would've actually paid me money back. I'm like, "No, just do the over five years instead of in one year," because the way they changed it.

Brian: The depreciation.

Earl: Yes. I can't fault him for that. All we can fault him for is whoever the accounting lobbies and lawyer lobbies that are paying for the crazy loopholes and tax bills that we have that the rich people take advantage of. If they ever went away, it would be much more fair. We would love to see rich people paying like they did in the '50s and '60s and none of them quit or closed businesses up, they still kept operating. They still did stuff and people made a decent living. My dad could support a whole family on just his salary alone. Nowadays, it's almost everybody needs two people. Wages haven't kept up.

Brian: You'd rather see the tax code change, but in the meantime, while this is the tax code, you don't fault Trump too much for taking advantage of it as it's written?

Earl: How can I? I remember in 2016 when Bernie-- I don't remember what his tax bill was but I remember that so many criticized him about paying low taxes, and he said, "I'm using the tax bill to my advantage the same as anybody else would." How can you fault him?

Brian: Bernie Sanders. Earl, thank you so much, call us again. Interesting point, I hadn't thought of the Bernie Sanders example. I think that's an accurate quote. I don't know if you remember that or can fact-check that, but it brings up this balance. What will people resent more, rich people getting away with things in the tax code or the IRS itself?

Nancy: I talked with a bunch of tax attorneys yesterday because I was curious how they view the bombshell New York Times story, and they said, largely, what the caller said to me, that's the president using the tax code legally in a way to minimize his bill. Lots of wealthy people do it, small business owners do it. It's perfectly legal. I think that the political risk to the president is that it just makes him appear wealthy, potentially, out of touch with people that he has this tiny tax bill, while people who have much less money than him pay much larger one.

The president has always tried to portray himself as an outsider of the political system and someone who really stands with the working class, and I think this shows the extent to which his own wealth has shielded him from things like paying taxes. I think that that's how the Biden campaign will use it. I think that, as the caller said, it's perfectly legal, a lot of people do it, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't carry political risk.

Brian: Also, a lot of rich people do pay a lot in taxes, right? When they debate whether there should be a tax hike on the rich, in New York State, for example, Governor Cuomo and others who resist that will point out the top 1% pays 40% of the income tax in the state. I don't know if that's the actual number, but it's a big number, and yet, Donald Trump didn't do that. There are individual differences there. Diego in Sunset Park, you're on WNYC. Hi, Diego.

Diego: Thanks for taking my call. Yesterday, you had the repeat of the show about creeping socialism. Well, this, to me, to be like reverse socialism, where me, as a small business owner, is paying more taxes than billionaire Donald Trump. To go further, this Republican tax deal that they did penalizes all blue states. I love you, Brian, and I listened to you for years, but that was malpractice on your part not to ask Nicole Malliotakis, which he plans to do on SALT. I mean, this is something that affects us.

Brian: I don't want to get bogged down in the topic of SALT. That's the state and local tax deduction on your federal taxes, couldn't ask Molliotakis or her opponent, Max Rose, everything about everything when they were here. There is a progressive position that supports not allowing people to deduct state and local income taxes beyond Trump's new $10,000 limit as a progressive measure. AOC takes that position, that beyond $10,000 in state and local income taxes, it becomes another tax advantage for the rich.

Like I said, I don't want to get bogged down in that. I'm just saying there are two sides of that issue, but I appreciate your call. Nancy, to his larger point, Diego says he's a small businessman and he doesn't have the tax loopholes to take advantage of as big business people do. The New York Times lead editorial, on their own series, was not so much about Trump this weekend, it was about the tax code.

I wonder if Chris Wallace, moderating the debate tonight, is going to bring that up and take it to the issue, which is really what affects a lot more people than how sleazy Donald Trump was or wasn't in his own tax life. There is an issue of the tax code, and I wonder if they're going to bring it up and make both sides debate that tonight, and put Trump on the spot by saying, "Yes, the tax code that gives me all these advantages should be changed," or defending it.

Nancy: If you remember, in 2012, when President Obama was running for reelection against Mitt Romney, taxes and the way that they would handle taxes and how progressive the tax code would remain was just such a key issue. There was huge policy battles over it. I feel like this election has been more about the coronavirus and also just more about both candidates, personally, who is better equipped to govern. It's a great question, and if Chris Wallace brings it up, I think it would really bring to the fore some key potential differences between how Biden and Trump would actually govern in the second term.

The Trump White House, before the coronavirus, was thinking, for instance, about trying to do a whole another round of tax cuts if he won reelection, and his economic team was working on that behind the scenes. Whereas, I think if Biden is elected, there could be an entirely different conversation about taxes, potentially, raising some taxes on very wealthy people. The Democrats are always eyeing the estate tax and changing the way that is structured. That's the money that people inherit and how that's taxed. It would be a great question because it would actually draw out the policy differences, not just the personality differences between the two candidates.

Brian: Amy Cook-- Nancy Cook, I should say, White House correspondent for POLITICO. See, my brain was one step ahead of my mouth because the next word out of my mouth is Amy, Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court nominee. You had an article just before the nomination called Trump walks abortion tightrope on SCOTUS pick. Now, he has always promised to pick anti-Roe judges and justices. For example, this, from 2016, during the campaign with Chris Wallace, who happens to be moderating tonight's debate.

Chris Wallace: Do you want to see the court overturn Roe v. Wade?

President Trump: Well, if we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that's really what's going to be-- That's will happen, and that'll happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the court. I will say this, it will go back to the states and the states will then make a determination.

Brian: "I am putting pro-life justices on the court." When he says it will go back to the states, that means Roe would be overturned. That's what Roe is. It’s a federal guarantee of abortion rights. If Roe is overturned, it means the question of abortion policy goes back to the states. When you write, Nancy, that he's walking a tightrope on the issue, what's the tightrope?

Nancy: Well, basically, what has happened is that the president was so open in 2016 about the fact that he only wanted people who are against abortion put on the Supreme Court. That was a key criteria for his justices. The thing is, Republicans have been so coy about this. They don't like justices to talk about it. They think that it's a hot button issue. They don't want it out there. They want to talk in much broader, lofty terms about people who adhere to the Constitution. They don't want to get into abortion because they feel like it riles up both sides of the aisle, and they want to downplay it so they can just get the justices through the confirmation hearings.

We saw that happen last week. The president, himself, backpedaled on his earlier promise and was telling people that he did not ask Amy Coney Barrett about her views on abortion or overturning Roe v. Wade during the many hours that he spent with her last Monday and Tuesday, interviewing her at the White House. A lot of people around him said that wasn't for him to do. Meanwhile, there's a bunch of social conservatives and evangelicals and anti-abortion groups who want him to publicly say, "No, this is a key thing. This is a criteria." I think that's the tightrope. The White House is trying to downplay a just because they're trying to do this confirmation fight so very quickly.

They don't want abortion to come up because they think it will slow things down. People will have questions, of course, as they should. The social conservatives really want that issue front and center because that is a key reason why they support Trump. There’s a bunch of social conservatives and evangelicals and Catholics who didn't really like the president in 2016. They didn't like his rhetoric, they didn't like the thrice-married thing, they didn't like the Hollywood Access tape, but they got behind him because of his Supreme Court list. We’ve seen some of that support fall away in 2020. This is a way for him to bring them back into the fold with this particular judicial nomination.

Brian: How much do you think the coming case on the Affordable Care Act, which the court will hear in just a matter of weeks or just after the election, how much do you think that will be a centerpiece of the confirmation hearings?

Nancy: I think it will be a centerpiece for the confirmation hearings because that is the Democrat’s main line of attack, it seems like to me, with Amy Coney Barrett. They really want to talk about how millions of people could lose healthcare in the middle of a pandemic if the Affordable Care Act is struck down. I think that it's very likely that it would be struck down by the court if she's appointed and the court tilts right. You would have a ton of people losing insurance or potentially having COVID-19 count as a pre-existing condition, which would be wild.

I think that that is a really key message for them. Healthcare was such a potent message for the Democrats in 2018 during the midterms, and they're going to try to use that again this time in the confirmation hearings because they think that's a message that can appeal to all types of people. It will be a real conversation in the confirmation hearings.

Brian: We just have a couple of minutes left, then, we’re going to have Andrew Weissmann on, who was a top prosecutor in the Mueller investigation. He's a financial fraud expert, and he's going to have a lot more to say about the tax returns. About the timeline of the confirmation or the process, I'm seeing Monday, October 12th for the start of hearings, Thursday, October 22nd for a Senate Judiciary Committee vote, so I guess the following week for a full Senate vote, assuming all goes as Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell are laying it out.

October 22nd is also the night of the final presidential debate. Tonight’s the first one, that's supposed to be the third one. Lindsey Graham, the Judiciary Committee chairman, must think voting to confirm Barrett in committee that day is good for the president, in that context. Should I read it that way? Maybe because it takes focus off the virus or anything else?

Nancy: Well, I think that the White House definitely feels and some Republicans feel like this is a good thing because it does take focus off the virus. It reminds some of Trump’s base who have moved away from him why they supported him in the first place. It's something that they can be proactive about and say, "Oh, we're doing this thing. This is a key part of the Trump record, this judicial Legacy."

It allows them to circumvent questions about the recession, the social unrest, how the White House is handling the pandemic, Trump's taxes. All of these things that have been so negative for them and people are so unhappy about, and I think that's why we're seeing the low approval rating for the president. It allows them to seize on this as a capstone of Trump's first term in time for the last debate.

Brian: Last thing, how big a deal are the Democrats making of this wing of Catholicism called People of Praise that they say Barrett is part of? I see one of your political colleagues wrote an article about how influential the group is in shaping the city of South Bend, Indiana, so maybe someone should ask Mayor Pete about this. People's religious views are their own. They only become relevant if someone is trying to bend the law to conform their religion, violating separation of church and state in that direction, rather than being independently faithful to American civic law. Are the Dems making that case?

Nancy: I think the Democrats really want the focus of the confirmation hearings to be healthcare. I think that they are trying to steer clear of attacks that they view as more personal, whether it's the size of her family, whether it's her own religion. Dianne Feinstein made some comments during her confirmation hearing for the circuit court judge, talking about how the dogma lives in her, and the White House was thrilled by that. They felt like it really riled up conservatives and made her a more sympathetic character. I feel like the Democrats are going to tread very carefully on the subject of her religion this time around.

Brian: Nancy Cook, White House correspondent for Politico. Great job. Thank you so much.

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