Fox's Ainsley Earhardt defends giant corporations paying no taxes: “So what?”

From the June 14 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

Video file

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Well Joe Biden made some hay yesterday, this time doing something that everybody on the Democratic side is doing, taking aim at corporations. And in particular, one with a CEO who has been in the headlines a lot who tends to lean left and has been in the crosshairs of the president -- Jeff Bezos and Amazon. 

STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): That's right. And there's an article in The New York Times and it said this: “Profitable giants like Amazon pay zero in corporate taxes. Some voters are of sick of it.” That was The New York Times a couple of months ago. But then Joe Biden took up the mantle yesterday in a tweet. 

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): He said, “I have nothing against Amazon, but no company pulling in billions of dollars of profits should pay a lower tax rate than firefighters and teachers. We need to reward work, not just wealth.” And it backfired. 

KILMEADE: Yeah, Amazon answered and they said, “look, we've paid $2.68 billion since 2016 in taxes. We pay every penny we owe. Congress designed tax laws to encourage companies to reinvest in the economy.” So what they're saying is they're not cheating. “We have $200 billion in investments since 2011, and 300,000 U.S. jobs” because of it. “Assume VP Biden's complaint is with the tax code, not Amazon.” They did get $129 million in rebates on $11.2 billion in profits. 

EARHARDT: So what? 

KILMEADE: Delta and Duke Energy are examples of two major companies that did the same thing.

EARHARDT: Listen, when you create 300,000 jobs, so what if you get a tax break? That's great. We want you to come to New York. Remember when Amazon was supposed to come here, and then it was squashed by all these lawmakers? It's ridiculous. If you hire 300,000 people, they all live in your community, right? Not only are you employing them so that they feel good about themselves, they're working hard, but also they spend money in your community, they buy houses, they pay taxes, they send their kids to school. It's ridiculous. So what if they don't pay as much in taxes as everyone else does? 

DOOCY: Well listen, there are different breaks for businesses, just a different -- 

EARHARDT: It's an incentive. 

DOOCY: Sure. And so Amazon is saying, look, whatever we owed, we paid. Joe Biden, I would say, is having a bad couple of weeks. He had a couple of flip-flops and now one of the biggest companies in the world is saying hey, Mr. former vice president, let's get the facts straight. 

KILMEADE: Exactly why the Trump Organization is not too keen on releasing their taxes, because people don't understand. In the real estate business in particular, there is incentive to reinvest as opposed to just write checks, because they want to keep the economy moving.

Previously:

At conservative event, Fox “news division" anchor Shannon Bream praised GOP tax bill and Trump “rolling back regulations”

Fox Business panel panics over Democratic proposals to tax the wealthy: “That is communist”

As support for the GOP tax law plummets, Fox & Friends blames direct deposit