Although Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump weren’t being fact-checked in real time by moderator Lester Holt, there was no shortage of context being added by news organizations around the country—and The Daily Beast is no exception.
Clinton hit the former reality-TV show host over his early practice of discriminating against prospective renters of color. According to a 1973 Department of Justice lawsuit, Trump properties discriminated against black people and marked their rental applications with a “C” for “colored.” Details of the secret system used to exclude black tenants from buildings in Brooklyn, Queens, and Norfolk, Virginia, were extensively reported in December by The Daily Beast’s Gideon Resnick.
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Holt asked Trump directly, and repeatedly, whether he plans to release his tax returns, following in the tradition of every major presidential candidate since Richard Nixon.
The Daily Beast’s David Cay Johnston found that Trump did not pay income tax in several years. In 1984, for example, he listed no income, and he deducted $626,264 as expenses.
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And although Trump attempted to hammer Clinton for her alleged role (along with President Obama) in “founding” the Islamic State terror group, The Daily Beast has previously reported on Trump’s “master plan” to defeat ISIS, which seems to rely heavily on strategies already used by the Obama administration.
