The bombshell revelations that President
Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he ran for office and paid no income taxes at all in many others threaten to undercut a pillar of his appeal among blue-collar voters and provide a new opening for his
Democratic rival,
Joe Biden, on the eve of the first presidential debate.
Trump has worked for decades to build an image of himself as a hugely successful business mogul — even choosing that moniker as his Secret Service code name.
The development comes at a particularly precarious moment for Trump, whose
Republican campaign is struggling to overcome criticism of the president's handling of the pandemic.