Trump Is Right About Taxing the Rich
President Donald Trump reportedly asked House Speaker Mike Johnson to add a new, higher, top income tax rate on annual earnings above $2.5 million to a new budget bill. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Raising taxes on the wealthy shouldn’t be Republican heresy. Here’s how to do it.
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5 mins
Produced by ElevenLabs using AI narration
Donald Trump has upended Republican orthodoxy on everything from free trade to foreign policy. Now he is being tempted with the ultimate GOP heresy: a proposal, bubbling up on the party’s populist wing, to raise taxes on the rich.
It has created tensions between advocates such as House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, on the one hand, and anti-tax traditionalists such as Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and Grover Norquist, the lobbyist who exacts no-tax-rise pledges from GOP House candidates, on the other.
For the moment, Trump seems uncharacteristically squishy on the issue, spooked by something that rarely frightens him otherwise: political blowback.
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