HOW TRUMPITES WILL PERSUADE THEMSELVES THAT TAXING HEDGE FUNDERS IS ACTUALLY CONSERVATIVE

This seems like something you can't possibly say and retain the support of rank-and-file right-wingers:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says he would change the tax laws to force people who work at hedge funds to pay more in taxes, because "the hedge fund guys are getting away with murder."

In an interview with Time Magazine published last week, Trump said he might want to "switch taxes around" because "I have hedge fund guys that are making a lot of money that aren't paying anything." He confirmed on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday that he would change the tax system to force those who work for hedge funds to pay more.

"They're paying nothing and it's ridiculous. I want to save the middle class," Trump said. "The hedge fund guys didn't build this country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky."

Raise taxes?! On job creators?! Heresy!

But no, as I learn from at least some of the folks in this Free Republic thread, it's cool, because hedge-funders are primarily Democrats:

i approve forcing hedge fund to pay the same rate, but this rate should be lower. So many hedge fund managers are democrats who advocate higher taxes on others, but not themselves

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Eliminating carried interest will hit leftist billionaires such Tom Steyer, Warren Buffett, Soros, Jon Corzine, and the boys at Goldman Sachs hard.

It won’t affect the 20% capital gains rate for the average middle class taxpayer with stocks in her/his retirement portfolio.

Generally I’m not for higher taxes but at least this one might actually reduce some of the millions of dollars progressive billionaires give to leftist political candidates and causes.

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I wouldn’t care if marxists hang from the lampposts. They created the current financial system. The investors play by their rules.

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Then-US Sens Clinton and Corzine. Corzine was fresh out of Goldman Sachs executive suite, buying his NJ Senate seat office for $65 million; then buying the NJ governorship. Out of office, Corzine ran a hedge fund where $1.5 B went missing.

Chelsea's husband, Mark Mezvinsky, runs a hedge fund that gained access to bigtime Wall Street investors w/ ties to the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation.

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I know a couple of hedge fund guys from business. Pure sleaze. Think wolf of wall street. And they’re Dems.

So, are hedge-funders really Democrats? Judging from their giving -- at least in the recent election cycles -- no, they aren't, according to Open Secrets:



It should be noted that New Jersey senator Cory Booker, a Democrat, was the largest individual recipient of hedge fund cash in 2014. But the next 19 recipients in the top 20 were all Republicans:



And, of course, in 2012 Mitt Romney received nearly four times as much hedge fund money as Barack Obama.

Hedge funders give to Democratic presidential candidates when they think a Democratic presidency is inevitable and they want to try to ensure that the winner of the election will play ball. (That happened in 2008.) They give to some useful Democrats in the Senate, particularly in states such as New York and New Jersey, where Republicans rarely win Senate elections -- and, yes, frequently they get what they pay for from those Democrats. (What they get is not liberalism.) But none of this means that the majority of hedge-funders are Democrats, or liberals (except on certain social issues).

But if it comforts the Trumpites to believe this, and to believe that "marxists ... created the current financial system," which are then imposed on poor, suffering investors, well, whatever floats their boat.