Donald Trump has doubled-down on his anti-tax strategy by pledging to eliminate all taxes from overtime pay, joining with his pledge to eliminate all taxes from tipped wages.

“That gives people more of an incentive to work. It gives the companies a lot. It’s a lot easier to get the people,” Trump said to the crowd at his Tucson, Arizona, rally Thursday afternoon. “You know, I went to some economists, great ones, and I said, What do you think? They said, It would be unbelievable. You’ll get a whole new workforce by doing that,” he added.

As Trump said “all taxes,” that would remove overtime pay from being subject to both income and payroll taxes, which would negatively affect both general government funding and funding for social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare and unemployment. His earlier plan to remove payroll and income taxes from tips would have a similarly negative effect on those social plans.


What You Need To Know

  • Former President Donald Trump pledged to eliminate all taxes on overtime pay, following his previous promise to eliminate all taxes from tipped wages 

  • While Trump says his plan gives people more incentive to work, removing payroll taxes would again whittle down revenues intended for social insurance programs like Medicare, unemployment and Social Security 

  • Trump also repeated debunked claims about migrant gangs taking over a city in Colorado and rumors that immigrants were stealing and eating peoples' pets in Ohio communities 

  • The former president will continue his post-debate tour with events in Las Vegas and Los Angeles on Friday

“No matter how much he lies now, Donald Trump’s record and agenda are clear — as president, he stole millions of dollars of wages from the workers he purports to represent. Trump tried to rip away overtime pay for nearly 10 million workers and devastated families. A second term will be even worse,” Harris for President campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said. “He is desperate and scrambling and saying whatever it takes to try to trick people into voting for him.”

Trump’s Tucson rally was his first campaign event since the Presidential debate Tuesday against Vice President Kamala Harris. By most accounts, the debate was a victory for Harris and a drubbing for Trump, who began composed before allowing himself to be baited into angry responses about rally sizes, unfounded accusations about migrant communities and violent crime across the country.

“They said he’s an angry person. No, they’re destroying our country,” he said, before imitating Harris mockingly smiling at him during the debate. “But I am angry about Venezuelan gangs taking over Aurora, Colorado, and illegal Haitian, they came in, illegal Haitian migrants taking over a beautiful place. It was so beautiful, Springfield, Ohio — I was just there…now it’s just, what, a place — can you imagine? You have this small little community, all of a sudden, you have 20,000 illegals in your community. Nobody knows where they come from.”

While authorities in Aurora have arrested people connected to the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, there’s no evidence the gangs have — as Trump claimed during the debate — “taken over” buildings or the town itself. Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and Council Member Danielle Jurinsky — both Republicans — released a joint statement on Wednesday acknowledging gang activity, but said that the “overstated claims fueled by social media and through select news organizations are simply not true.”

As for Trump’s claims about Springfield, Ohio, there’s no evidence that the 20,000 Haitian immigrants he referred to are in the U.S. illegally. He later repeated the debunked claim that Haitian migrants are “walking off with the town’s geese…and even walking off with their pets. ‘My dog’s been taken, my dog’s been stolen.’ This can only happen — these people are the worst — this is, I’m telling you, Biden and Kamala, this is the worst combination in the history of our country,” Trump said.

Two days after the debate, a bomb threat was emailed to city leaders in the city, causing city hall, two DMV locations, two schools and county court facilities to be evacuated and investigated. No bombs were found.

Tensions have been high in the community as leaders try to stabilize infrastructure, find funding to support newcomers, establish translation services and new drivers programs and find ways to ease stress on the health care system. The unfounded rumors being spread by the two standard bearers of the Republican party are not easing the transition.

However, Trump focused on what he called “hundreds and hundreds or thousands of stories,” of violent immigrants “coming in from all over the world, from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums…at numbers that we have never seen before.” 

Despite more than a year on the campaign trail, Trump has not produced evidence that migrants coming into the U.S. — legally or illegally — are being released into the country from prisons, jails or insane asylums. 

Trump also claimed that California — and specifically Gov. Gavin Newsom — were seeking to “give illegals mortgages.” That’s untrue. Last week, Newsom vetoed a legislative bill that would have given certain migrants access to state-backed home loans.

Though the crux of the event was a call to “make housing affordable again,” Trump often veered off topic to complain about the debate, about the “fake news media,” about President Joe Biden, about transgender women in the Olympics (a debunked claim that he refuses to let go of) and his insistence that the FBI “left out large numbers of areas where they had a lot of crime,” suggesting the FBI doctored crime numbers. (The FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report is a collection of self-reported data from law enforcement agencies across the U.S. — if agencies don’t report the data, it isn’t collected.)

Trump also said that he was happy to have gotten the endorsement of the vice president’s brother and the vice president’s family. Kamala Harris doesn’t have a brother, and her family very publicly supported her at the Democratic National Convention. Though, if he’s referring to members of the Walz family, Trump apparently mistakenly suggested that Walz has already been elected.

Trump will continue his post-debate tour Friday with a campaign stop in Las Vegas, followed by a news conference in Los Angeles.