Seven hundred and fifty dollars: the figure, published Sunday, September 27, marked the spirits.

This is, according to the New York Times, the amount of federal income tax paid by Donald Trump in 2016, the year he won the presidential election.

Since then, the American president has been looking for the right response when he has to face Joe Biden in a first debate on Tuesday 29.

The scoop is important because his tax returns are at the heart of a bitter battle, Donald Trump having always fiercely refused to publish them unlike all his predecessors since the 1970s.

A disastrous revelation for his image

Mine scowling, he offered Sunday evening, during a particularly rambling press briefing, the image of a frustrated president, worried six weeks before the election.

If defeated, he would become the first president not to be reelected for more than a quarter of a century (defeat of George HW Bush to Bill Clinton in 1992).

Beyond the debate on tax optimization, the article, which paints the picture of a heavily indebted real estate group, further damages the image of a successful businessman.

Highlighting his negotiating skills and his "instinct" - he has always made his "success" in the business world a campaign argument.

"His financial situation is strained, with operational losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt for which he has personally vouched," writes The New York Times.

If he denounced "bogus information", he stubbornly refused to confirm or deny the now public figures, sticking to regular attacks against the media.

..... Also, if you look at the extraordinary assets owned by me, which the Fake News hasn't, I am extremely under leveraged - I have very little debt compared to the value of assets.

Much of this information is already on file, but I have long said that I may release ....

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 28, 2020

"My father paid tens of millions of dollars in tax," said his son Donald Jr on Monday morning on Fox News, referring in particular to local taxes.

Biden leads the polls

A worrying factor for the president: the remarkable stability of the polls which all lean in favor of his Democratic opponent.

According to the latest Washington Post-ABC poll, the former vice-president of Barack Obama has a lead of ten points at the national level (53% against 43%), almost identical to that observed in August before the conventions of the two parties.

In the key states that will determine the outcome of the Nov. 3 poll, the gap is smaller, but Joe Biden remains well-positioned, especially in Wisconsin, which the Republican won in 2016.

The American president will speak at the beginning of the afternoon from the gardens of the White House on the coronavirus epidemic, a subject on which he has remained rather in the background since the United States crossed the 200,000 death mark .

The Democratic candidate has no public appearance on his agenda.

>> To read also: Supreme Court: "The American presidential campaign takes a back seat"

With AFP

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