It was revealed by The New York Times on Saturday that Donald Trump may have avoided paying taxes for years. According to its report, “Mr. Trump’s 1995 records said that tax rules … would have allowed Mr. Trump to use his $916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period.” The headline blared, “Donald Trump Tax Records Show He Could Have Avoided Taxes for Nearly Two Decades, The Times Found.” But the headline is deceptive in that it doesn’t factor in Trump’s payments of property taxes, sales taxes, real-estate taxes, state taxes and other federal taxes. And it also builds a story not around what did happen, but what could have.

The irony of the Times making hay over Trump having (legally) not paid income taxes is that the paper itself did not pay taxes in 2014. As Forbes reported, “For tax year 2014, The New York Times paid no taxes and got an income tax refund of $3.5 million even though they had a pre-tax profit of $29.9 million in 2014.” Kettle, meet pot.

Reports like this reveal far more about the Times’ own leftist ideology and Clinton super PAC behavior than anything else. Nearly half of Americans do not pay federal income taxes. Remember Mitt Romney’s infamous 47% comment, which was accurate in its assessment although it proved to be toxic for his campaign. It was toxic because of the Democrat playbook of class envy politics. Harry Reid exploited this by falsely accusing Romney of not having paid taxes. The Times got his memo.

Hillary Clinton, herself a very wealthy woman, hypocritically pushes class envy, while championing herself as somehow an exception to the Left’s class warfare rule. She is the one who cares about the poor and middle class, blaming the wealthy for not “paying their fair share,” all while she shelters income in the Clinton Foundation. For the amount of time the Democrats have been banging this drum, you’d have thought by now they would have fixed the “problem” with all the tax increases they have implemented over the years, but cities like Detroit highlight the flaw in their logic. Their message assumes that those who have become wealthy have done so only by taking advantage of others. But what is even more sinister is that the Left is primarily committed to providing for the government. Where the wealthy provide the monetary fuel for growing the economy — creating jobs, which in turn spreads wealth and raises the standard of living — government tends toward over-regulation and over-taxation, often creating greater inefficiency and economic stagnation. Anyone remember the last eight years under Obama?