Anti-tax group down on Trump; Busey on board

Count the Club for Growth, the influential Washington anti-tax group, among those horrified at the thought of a Donald Trump presidential bid.

“Donald Trump for president? You’ve got to be joking,” Club for Growth’s president, former Rep. Chris Chocola, said in a statement Monday.

The club’s problem with Trump is not his penchant for endless self-promotion, his famous hair, or the fact that a man named Meat Loaf could still win “Celebrity Apprentice.”

It’s that Trump, in his last incarnation as a presidential candidate in 2000, wrote a book in which he favored universal health care and championed a one-time soak-the-rich tax to clear the nation’s debt.

That’s a dealbreaker.

“Donald Trump has advocated for massive tax increases that display a stunning lack of knowledge of how to create jobs. His love for a socialist-style universal health care system and his alarming obsession with protectionist policies are automatic disqualifiers among free-market conservatives,” Chocola said. “This publicity stunt will sputter and disappear just as quickly as the ‘The Apprentice’ is losing viewers.”

The club is also concerned about Trump’s pledge to launch of a trade war with China if elected. Trump has called for a stiff tariff on Chinese imports.

But there was good news for the Donald on Monday. Even if the Club for Growth isn’t going to be endorsing him any time soon, Gary Busey is on board.

“He knows about the country. He knows about this situation we’re in now,” Busey said on NBC’s Today early Monday, after the actor was booted from “Celebrity Apprentice.”

In that episode, the man who would be American’s next president uttered these words: “Meat Loaf, this is really bothering you, isn’t it?”

Watch the interview, in which Busey also discusses Meat Loaf’s anger-management issues, here:

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