Mike Pence Releases Tax Returns, Will Trump Follow.
HARLOW: Donald Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, releasing his tax returns. They were pretty normal. They show he and his wife made $113,000 last year. As for Donald Trump, he has not followed suit. It's not likely he will before the election. He says his attorneys have told him not to release tax returns from 2009 on, because he's under audit. I should note every presidential nominee in both parties in the last nine elections have shown their tax returns. Nixon did so in office while he was under audit. To talk about all of this, CNN political commentator, Ryan Lizza; and "CNN Money's Jeanne Sahadi. She just wrote a piece this week called, "Why Trump Owes it to Voters to Release His Tax Returns." Guys, thank you for being here. Jeanne, to begin with you, here is what Trump has said. He said he, quote, "fights like hell to pay as little as possible in taxes." And he also said he's given about $100 million in recent years to charity. Talk about the importance of seeing his taxes, to be able to not only verify the charitable giving but what else they give us in terms of the context of the man and the citizen?</s>JEANNE SAHADI, CNN MONEY SENIOR WRITER: He has no public service experience. He's coming to the electorate and saying you should trust me. I'm a great businessman. I make a lot of money. I know great deals. I give a lot to charity. I'm an aggressive tax -- takes aggressive tax strategies. OK. You can trust him but you have to verify. He doesn't have to release the whole tax return. They would be too complicated. If he released the top few pages, we'd learn a lot. We'd learn about his income, charitable givings and his deductions and how much tax he's made. All his competitors have done it. There's no reason to be an exception for him. His audit is not an excuse. He's running for president.</s>HARLOW: His running mate just said it last night, too. We'll put pressure and we'll get to that in a moment. But, Jeanne, a follow up. If the IRS were to finish the audit on Monday, would we know that or is it up to them?</s>SAHADI: It's completely up to them. If he's being audited, it's immaterial. He is not legally prohibited from releasing them. Basically, it's completely understandable why he doesn't release them. Of course, he will be scrutinized. People will say things. Media will say things. He won't like it. He's running for office in the most scrutinized position in the world. He has to be able to withstand the scrutiny.</s>HARLOW: It's interesting because a trump advisor told CNN recently, quote, "We just don't see much upside in releasing them."</s>SAHADI: There probably isn't.</s>HARLOW: And, Ryan Lizza --</s>HARLOW: -- Trump said on FOX to Greta Van Susteren, talking about Mitt Romney on releasing his tax returns, that that may have cost him the election. I'm paraphrasing there. Do you think that's odd that Mike Pence came out and released his last night? Does that put pressure on Trump to do the same?</s>LIZZA: It's a little strange because it makes the point that most nominees, or as you pointed out all nominees -- I don't know if every running mate has, but I assume most of them have.</s>SAHADI: They have.</s>LIZZA: Thank you. Have done this. The fact that the campaign says we don't see any upside, well, that's not the point of releasing your tax returns. That's not the point of any kind of transparency. It's not whether you see it politically advantageous to show the American people something as important as that. It's so we can scrutinize you and we can decide -- we, I mean, the public and voters -- whether there's anything we should know before we give you the most powerful position in the world. I do think it's strange they decided to put Pence's out there. Gets it back in the news. Look, they should get some credit for putting Pence's out. That's more information we have about this ticket. But especially for someone like Trump, who has never been in public service, who we don't have a traditional record to scrutinize, who has very large sums of money coming in, we don't know if there's foreign income, which is very important to know, and we don't have any verification of this claim about his charitable giving, which "The Washington Post" has looked at closely and said is not true.</s>HARLOW: Right. Here's what we do know, is that as a real estate developer, Jeanne, he would have had access to bigger, arguably bigger tax breaks and loopholes than any other profession because you've got depreciation, deduction, referrals on sales that lead him to say, like he did in Iowa in January, I pay as little in possible, I use every single thing in the book. There's nothing wrong or illegal with that at all. The point is we don't know anything without seeing at least the first few pages.</s>SAHADI: At least the first few pages. If he wanted too tell us more about his business, he could release his Schedule C, the Schedule K, which talks about his partnerships. Just the first few pages would be a good step.</s>HARLOW: But, Ryan, does it help a lot that Hillary Clinton refuses to release her speeches to the Wall Street banks, for example?</s>LIZZA: I think it's a good comeback from his campaign as a political matter.</s>HARLOW: Isn't there an equivalency?</s>LIZZA: Look, as a journalist, my view is there's nothing we shouldn't know about people running for president. It's the most important office in the land. If they did something, if they spoke to some group, we should hear about it. I will say there's not necessarily a long-established tradition of every private speech becoming public. So Clinton has a bit of wiggle room where she can claim, well --</s>HARLOW: But most candidates have not made hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wall Street banks.</s>LIZZA: I think she should take the deal. I think she should say, yes, I'll release these if you release your tax returns. The public would benefit if they agreed to that. But the Trump campaign has decided -- this is the only way to read this. They have decided that it's more advantageous for them to live with this as a political issue, with us talking about it all the time and having these questions without really knowing, that that's better than whatever is in the tax returns that would be revealed. Otherwise, they would do it.</s>HARLOW: They wouldn't say it exactly that way, but I talk your point. I have to leave it there. Ryan, Jeanne, thank you. And, Jeanne, a fascinating piece on this on CNNmoney.com.</s>LIZZA: Thanks, Poppy.</s>SAHADI: Thank you.</s>HARLOW: We'll be right back.