The public gets a first look at Trump's tax returns: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast:

USA TODAY National Correspondent Donovan Slack has the latest on what former President Donald Trump's tax returns reveal.

USA TODAY Deputy Managing Editor for Politics Luciana Lopez looks back at the year in politics.

Barbara Walters has died.

USA Today National Correspondent Will Carless talks about drag queen brunches.

It's time for the College Football Playoff.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson: Good morning and Happy New Year's Eve. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know, Saturday, the 31st of December 2022.

Today, Trump's tax returns have been released, plus, we look back at the year in politics and we remember Barbara Walters.

The top tax writing committee in congress released former President Donald Trump's tax returns to the general public yesterday. That ends a years-long battle and sheds light on a complicated labyrinth of businesses and holdings, typical of billionaires, but rarely seen in detail by the public. For more, producer PJ Elliott spoke to USA Today national correspondent Donovan Slack.

PJ Elliott: Donovan, thanks so much for joining 5 Things today.

Donovan Slack: Thanks for having me.

PJ Elliott: Let's start with this. What have we learned so far about former President Trump and his taxes?

Donovan Slack: There's thousands of pages and we're still going through them. But we know a few things by what experts last week flagged before they were released, and some of those things include businesses where the expenses exactly equal the income, effectively zeroing out taxes. That's one item we're looking closely at.

There were loans to his children, including Ivanka and Don, Jr. and Eric, that the experts questioned whether they were actually gifts that should be taxed or whether they were, in fact, loans as he claimed on his tax returns, in which case they would've accumulated interest and made that interest deductible for borrowers.

We don't actually know what's what yet, so we're still looking. It's really important not to jump to conclusions as experts have told us.

PJ Elliott: Do we know if Trump, while in office, signed any tax legislation that he directly benefited from?

Donovan Slack: Yeah, we can't answer that definitively right now. I would guess they benefited him in some way, just by nature of his income bracket. We know that it helped a lot of people.

PJ Elliott: Did the tax returns indicate any business success or failure?

Donovan Slack: They don't. I mean, that's one of the most difficult things to sort through because, obviously, there was a lot of losses claimed, but those losses offset income and those were really about reducing the tax bill. So tax returns are not really a good barometer for how successful a business is.

PJ Elliott: So what happens next? Is there anything that will come from them being released?

Donovan Slack: I think we have to wait and see. I think we will have days, weeks, if not months, of sifting through these documents. Not just us in the media, but experts out there and trying to figure out what does it all mean.

I mean, Democrats argued when they obtained the taxes that they wanted them released and they wanted access to them so that it would guide future tax law, changes to tax laws or potential changes as it were, so we have to see if that's actually going to happen. Of course, the chances are quite slim with Republicans taking over the house next week, so we'll have to wait and see.

PJ Elliott: Is there anything else that you feel the listeners should know from this situation?

Donovan Slack: I think it's important to note that the former president issued a statement saying he's really upset with Democrats for releasing the returns. He called it a witch hunt and said he's been the subject of a witch hunt since the day he descended the escalator in 2015 when he first wanted to run for president or announced he was running for president. So we all need to just keep in mind to stick to what we can see in the returns and go from there.

PJ Elliott: Donovan, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it and I know you've been busy.

Donovan Slack: No problem. Thank you.

Taylor Wilson: 2022 was a whirlwind year in politics. A surprising midterm election led the new cycle, but so, too, did major pieces of legislation, Supreme Court decisions and yes, former president Donald Trump. For a lookback at the year that was in politics, I'm now joined by USA Today deputy managing editor for politics, Luciana Lopez.

Luciana, thanks for joining me.

Luciana Lopez: No, thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson: All right. Right off the bat, tough question, what was the biggest political story of 2022?

Luciana Lopez: For me, the biggest political story this year was definitely the midterm elections. They were the first midterms of Biden's presidency. There were a lot of expectations. We had a lot of things factoring in everything from Trump to inflation to historical trends, and it kind of culminating in a pretty exciting election night.

Taylor Wilson: You mentioned Trump, another busy year in the news for the former president, be it January 6th hearings, be it classified documents, be it taxes. Luciana, can you sum up this Year of Trump for us?

Luciana Lopez: Sum it up in two words, Trump Slump. It's not been a great year for the former president. A lot of his handpicked candidates in the midterm elections faltered, some of them as early as the primaries, some of them kind of bit the dust in the general elections.

The January 6th committee had a series of very high-profile hearings watched by, literally, millions of people that squarely pointed the finger at him with regard to the riot and the insurrection at the Capitol.

You have investigations on multiple fronts. You have his tax returns being released at the end of the year, something he's fought against, literally, for years.

I hope he asked Santa for a better 2023 because this year was pretty bad for him.

Taylor Wilson: Yeah, to say the least.

All right. A big abortion ruling was one of the major stories this year. Can you put that decision in perspective, Luciana, and how it'll continue to be a big story in 2023?

Luciana Lopez: The decision by the Supreme Court in June to overturn Roe versus Wade was something that had been discussed as a possibility, but I think the reality hit people much harder than they were expecting. This, of course, meshed with the midterm elections. It helped drive a lot of people to the polls.

But more than that, you really saw this idea that a 49-year constitutional right people had being taken away from them really shook up the political landscape in a major way. We had voters in Kansas, for example, vote against a ballot measure that would have basically clamped down on abortion in the state, Kansas, which is not exactly known as pinko, commie, liberal, heathen, McKansas. So I think that for a lot of people, the fallout was very scary.

Taylor Wilson: All right. Luciana Lopez is USA Today's deputy managing editor for politics. Thanks so much as always.

Luciana Lopez: Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson: Barbara Walters has died. The legendary journalist was the first woman to co-host a morning and evening newscast. She made her on-air debut in 1956 at CBS, when she and four other women modeled bathing suits. By 1974, she was the first female co-host of NBC's Today Show, before a long career at ABC, interviewing celebrities and politicians on the newsmagazine 2020 and launching the daily chat show The View in 1997.

Over the years, she interviewed Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro, Monica Lewinsky and the Shah of Iran. She was famous for attempting, and often succeeding, in drawing tears from interview subjects and Walter's high profile at times brought parody. Comic Gilda Radner famously mocked her with an exaggerated impression on Saturday Night Live. Barbara Walters was 93 years old.

Drag queen brunches have become an American touchstone. They're diverse and inclusive social affairs where straight and not-straight adults and children are all welcome.

Now, they're also a cultural and literal battlefield. It's part of a pattern of escalating harassment and violence targeting the LGBTQ community. Producer Shannon Rae Green recently spoke with USA Today national correspondent Will Carless about one such drag queen brunch that took place in a quiet suburb of Dallas this past summer.

Shannon Rae Green Will Carless, thanks so much for coming onto the podcast.

Will Carless: Thanks for having me on.

Shannon Rae Green: Tell me about this one drag queen brunch.

Will Carless: What really brought this particular event to the national stage was the presence of armed anti-fascists, armed leftists, wearing rainbow badges, rainbow pride patches, but carrying ARs, carrying rifles and standing outside this event.

That was really what got the world's attention to this particular event. That was sort of one of the things that made us sit up and say, "How did we end up at this point where you have an armed LGBTQ gun group standing outside an event to protect it?"

Shannon Rae Green: Why are people on the right so upset about children attending events like these?

Will Carless: Any place where there's an intersection between drag and children have become proxy battlegrounds in this bigger fight for sort of the American soul. Essentially, you have people on the right saying, "This is completely wrong. This is sexualization of children. This should never be allowed to happen." On the left, you have proponents from the LGBTQ community saying, "Look, these are vital spaces for children to see that this is normal, that nothing bad is going to happen when you have somebody who dresses in drag and has some fun." These are fun, joyous events, and they're important events to reach out to children who are experiencing gender dysphoria, who are confused about their gender.

We had an attack on one of these spaces that was due to host an all-ages drag show in Club Q in Colorado Springs where five people were murdered. There's also been lots of events where there's been violence, there's been protests, and this has become a real front line in the American culture wars.

Shannon Rae Green: What do advocates for drag events say about why they are needed, particularly for young people?

Will Carless: As a cisgendered, middle-aged white guy, these children's drag shows are something that I might attend for entertainment or for something else, and that is the general point of them. They're supposed to be fun, joyous spaces where people can enjoy dressing up in wild outfits and everything else.

But there's a deeper resonance here, and that is for people, for children especially, who are confused about their gender or they're going through something and they're trying to sort of understand it, to show those children that, "Look, literally, down the street from you, there are people who love and support people who act differently, who dress differently, who don't live the same cisgendered lifestyle, and that's absolutely fine."

What we were told, this is what the experts told us, is that is tremendously important in terms of young LGBTQ children's mental health. It is extremely important to show them, "Look, even if your parents don't support you, even if your church doesn't support you, your school doesn't support you, even your friends don't support you, there is a world out there that will support you."

Shannon Rae Green: Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Will Carless: Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Taylor Wilson: It's the biggest Saturday of the year in college football. First up, at noon Eastern fifth-ranked Alabama takes on number nine, Kansas State, in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, while unranked Iowa and Kentucky battle in Nashville's Music City Bowl.

Then it's the moment college fans have been waiting for all year, the college football playoff. First up, number three TCU takes on number two Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona, followed by number four, Ohio State against top ranked and defending national champion Georgia in the Peach Bowl in Atlanta. The winners will face each other in next month's national championship game. You can tune in on ESPN then follow along with USA Today Sports.

You can find new episodes of 5 Things every day of the week right here, wherever you're listening right now, and I'll see you, Monday, with more of 5 Things from USA Today.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The public gets a first look at Trump's tax returns: 5 Things podcast