The Yankees president supports Trump, but not his tax plan
President Donald Trump is feeling the heat over his new tax plan, and it’s from a surprising place: the world of baseball. Randy Levine, president of the New York Yankees and one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, wrote a column for the conservative website Newsmax that was published Sunday, and Levine was not kind to Trump or the tax plan.
Levine appropriately began with a quote from an all-time Yankees great:
Mr. President, as one of your longest standing supporters, I respectfully request that you revisit your support for the individual tax reform package.
The good news is there is still time to fix it and make it better and more efficient. But as Yogi Berra said, Mr. President, “it is getting late early.”
Levine goes on to list the many reasons he doesn’t support the tax plan. Primarily, Levine says it’s a tax cut for the wealthy elite that would increase the tax burden on tens of millions of “middle class” Americans, many of whom live in Levine’s home state of New York. That’s a pretty easy criticism, but it’s clear that Levine has given this a lot of thought. He specifically disagrees with the elimination of the deduction of state and local taxes. He cites the tax rate that wealthy individuals are able to take advantage of, but that regular people are not. He also calls out the hypocrisy of allowing corporations to take advantage of deductions that individuals aren’t able to.
Levine goes hard on Trump in Newsmax. The language he uses is very respectful, but he doesn’t mince words. Near the end of the column, Levine drops this statement on Trump:
You may think the present deal is a win because something (anything) will get passed and be chalked up as an accomplishment for your administration. Nothing can be further from the truth.
Yowza. When one of Trump’s most ardent supporters lays it bare like that, you know there’s trouble brewing.
Levine opened his column with a Yogi Berra quote, but he didn’t close with one. Maybe he should have considered: “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.”
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Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher
