Rachel Maddow Turned a Scoop on Donald Trump's Taxes Into a Cynical, Self-Defeating Spectacle
By Willa Paskin
At 7:36 p.m. Tuesday, Rachel Maddow tweeted, BREAKING: We've got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC. (Seriously), sending the internet into a frenzy of theorizing. Did Maddow have Donald Trumps tax returns or just one of the Trumps tax returns? Could this be it, the tax return that would bring down the Donald? If this was it, why wasn't MSNBC cutting into its programming, instead of running a countdown clock to Maddows show? By 8:24, Maddow was tweeting that the tax return in question was Donald Trumps 1040 from 2005. By 8:30, still half an hour before Maddow started airing, the White House had responded to the MSNBC report, saying that Trump had paid $38 million on income of $150 million that year. An hour later, about 20 minutes after The Rachel Maddow Show started, Maddow would confirm these numbers, turning her big scoop about Donald Trumps long-missing tax returns into a cautionary tale about overhype. Rachel Maddow, you played yourselfand us too.
Its been a little bit of a hullabaloo around here this evening, I apologize for being flustered, Maddow said at the top of the hour, before confirming that her show had copies of Donald Trumps federal tax returns, obtained by the reporter David Cay Johnston, to share with her audience. In just a second were going to show you exactly what it is weve got, she said, before launching, instead, into a 20-minute monologue. Maddow seemed uncharacteristically nervous as she wended her way though what could kindly be described as context and which I am unkindly describing as word salad, a long meander that was difficult to follow even without the distracting promise of a revelatory tax return at its end.
The monologue started contextually enough, with a long-winded skewering of Trumps refusal to share his tax returns that touched on Richard Nixon, the Clintons, and his unaudited tax forms, before veering off conspiratorially. Whether or not you are a supporter of Donald Trump, Maddow said, It ought to give you pause that his explanations [for not releasing his tax returns] have never made any factual sense.
When you get an excuse from them that doesn't make sense, you have to look for another reason. Whats the real explanation? Well, choose your own adventure. She then launched into a long hypothetical about a particular Russian oligarchs possible relationship to Trump that touched on Florida real estate, Deutsche Bank, and Preet Bharara that Trumps tax returnsthough not, as it would turn out, the ones she actually hadcould conceivably clear up.
The longer Maddow went on, ever deeper into a conspiratorial thicket, the clearer it became that whatever tax returns Maddow had, they werent as juicy as the ones she was talking about. If she had anything that damning, she would have shared them from the start. TV is a ratings game, but an entire episode about highly damaging tax returns is just as likely to get you great ratings as milking the possibility that you have highly damaging tax returns and less likely to get you compared to Geraldo. Maddow even went so far as to hold the tax returns back until after the first commercial break, as if we were watching an episode of The Bachelor and not a matter of national importancebecause we werent, in fact, watching a matter of national importance, just a cable news show trying to set a ratings record.
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http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/03/15/rachel_maddow_s_trump_taxes_scoop_was_a_cynical_self_defeating_spectacle.html?wpsrc=newsletter_tis&sid=5388f1c6dd52b8e4110003de
FarPoint
(12,444 posts)Judgement set aside for me...I am grateful she brought in what she had because...It show us how serious this defiance by Trump is for American....He has something to hide folks... Anything out there to engage the vigorous discussion and evoke a demand for him to reveal his tax returns works for me....
We need ALL TAX RETURNS NOW.
gibraltar72
(7,512 posts)and want to talk about cynical?
Cary
(11,746 posts)I'm in a wait and see mode.
Ccarmona
(1,180 posts)The Opening Monologue brought many who don't regularly watch her up to speed on the facts.
bettyellen
(47,209 posts)chelsea0011
(10,115 posts)all the pressure on trump, and I like that.
Tarheel_Dem
(31,241 posts)non-story, but over-hype can bring its own rewards, but you should always be sure that your story lives up to said hype. I was skeptical yesterday when people were sure that this would bring down Trumpf, but I won't beat Rachel up for trying to peel back the layers of the smelly Trumpf onion.