Donald Trump Avoids Tax Talk, and Calls Comparisons to Nazi Pledge ‘Ridiculous’

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Donald J. Trump signed autographs after a campaign rally in Concord, N.C., on Monday.Credit Travis Dove for The New York Times

Updated, 10:50 a.m. | Donald J. Trump on Tuesday declined to say what his effective tax rate was in 2014, and called comparisons of his “pledge” request that people at his rallies raise their hands and vow to support him to Nazi rallies “ridiculous.”

Mr. Trump spoke via telephone in a series of morning television program interviews with NBC’s “Today” show, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and “Fox and Friends” on Fox News.

On “Morning Joe,” Mr. Trump swatted away a question about his tax rate and how much he gave to charity.

“I gave a lot of money to charity — I could release a list — I don’t talk about my tax rate because I’m under audit but when the audit’s finished, I’ll give you my tax returns,” said Mr. Trump, adding later that “you can’t learn very much from a tax return, almost, frankly, almost nothing.”

Mr. Trump has said he cannot release his tax returns, even older ones, because he’s being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Officials with the I.R.S. have said someone is free to release their returns even if they’re being audited.

Mr. Trump also brushed aside questions about his recent move to ask voters at rallies to raise their right hands and promise to vote for him.

When the “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski asked if Mr. Trump was trying in some way to emulate Adolf Hitler, as some critics have charged, he responded: “That’s amazing that would even be brought up. Of course not. Of course not. That’s ridiculous. This is the first I’ve heard of it this morning.”

Earlier, on “Today,” Mr. Trump first said of the pledge-Nazi comparisons, “Until this call, I didn’t know it was a problem.”

This week, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, whose country Mr. Trump has vowed to make pay for a wall along the United States’ southern border, invoked Hitler and Benito Mussolini, the founder of the fascist movement, when speaking about Mr. Trump. “That’s the way Mussolini arrived and the way Hitler arrived,” Mr. Nieto told the Excélsior newspaper about Mr. Trump’s simplistic prescriptions for complex problems.

On “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Trump was asked if he thinks it’s wrong to have a contested Republican National Convention even if he doesn’t get the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

“Whoever is leading at the end should sort of get it, I would think so,” Mr. Trump said. “That is the way democracy works. And I don’t know that that is going to happen, but I’ll tell you, there will be a lot of people that will be very upset if that doesn’t happen, because we have really fervent, wonderful people.”

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