Seth Meyers Taunts Trump Over Tax Returns: ‘I Think You’re Poor’

Seth Meyers took a “closer look” Monday night at this weekend’s report that showed Donald Trump may have avoided paying taxes for nearly two decades and in the end shared his theory for why the GOP candidate refuses to release his tax returns.

But first, the Late Night host examined the attempts of Trump surrogates like Rudy Giuliani to spin the candidate’s $916 million loss in 1995 as a positive—and applauded journalists like Jake Tapper for refusing to let him get away with it.

“Here’s why this latest revelation is damning,” Meyers said. “First of all, there’s the fact that Trump has consistently sold himself as a brilliant business man who could use those skills to fix the economy. But as we found out this week, as Trump got richer over those 18 years, his investors saw their money disappear. Normally to get that screwed you have to actually go into the casino,” he joked.

“So this week, yet again, showed how much of a scam artist Trump is,” Meyers said. “And even after all of this, Trump still won’t release his tax returns. Just think of how bad they have to be that whatever’s in there is worse than a $916 million loss.”

Then, speaking directly into the camera to Trump, Meyers posited his theory for why “you won’t release you returns.”

“I think you’re poor,” he said, smiling as the audience cheered. “I think you pretend to be rich, but you’ve been going town to town for 18 months selling cheap hats. And you know what else I think? I think you’re only up at 3 a.m. in the morning because you have a second job answering customer-service calls from India.”

“And I think you want to live at the White House,” he continued, “because you heard the previous lady who lived there had a garden and you want free tomatoes.” Or maybe, he added, Trump doesn’t want to be president, is “panicking” that he might actually get elected, and leaked those pages from his tax returns himself. After all, the return address did say Trump Tower.