Dem lawmaker: Trump is ‘a con man’

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday labeled President Trump a “con man” for his support the newly passed GOP tax bill.

“There is a bait-and-switch … with how this president has governed over the last year. He baits and then switches. He says one thing and there’s really a different result,” Meeks said on CNN.

{mosads}“I’ve said all along that this president is a con man … he gives you something that might sound sweet, but you know it’s gonna be bitter in the end,” he continued. “You’ve got to pay extra attention to what he does because he’s a bait-and-switch con man.”

As an example, he pointed to the tax bill.

“Eighty percent of the tax cuts that [are] coming is going to go to the richest 1 percent. And that tax cut expires in 10 years, whereas it does not expire for the major corporations,” he said.

The GOP tax bill, which Trump signed into law last week, lowers the top individual tax rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent and slashes the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. The individual tax cuts will expire.

The legislation also increases the exemption amounts for the individual alternative minimum tax and the estate tax and eliminates the ObamaCare individual mandate, as well as limiting deductions for state, local and property taxes.

Multiple recent polls indicated the GOP tax bill is unpopular among the U.S. public, but Trump has defended the bill, claiming “insider polls” show support for the bill is “strong.”

The Joint Committee on Taxation said last week that the tax bill won’t fully pay for itself through economic growth and would cost $1.07 trillion over the next 10 years.