After MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow revealed a couple of pages of Donald Trump’s 2005 tax returns, the Media Research Center went into overdrive trying to dismiss it as a “fail” and/or a “flop” and/or a “non-story”:
- Maddow Wastes Our Time in Delaying Release of Trump Tax Returns; Internet Loses It
- CNN Mocks MSNBC’s Overhyped Trump-Taxes Exclusive: Not ‘Explosive’
- CNN’s Malveaux: Trump Tax Returns Ask ‘Whether He Skipped Out on Paying His Fair Share of Taxes’ (in which Jackson Richman made the weird assertion that CNN “expose[d] its bias against President Donald Trump’s 2005 tax returns”)
- ‘What Is He Trying to Hide?’ GMA Eagerly Looks for Scandal in Trump’s Tax Returns
- Nets Spend 20 Minutes on Trump Tax Return Non-Story ‘But What Is It He’s Trying to Hide?’
- Despite Mockery, MSNBC Spends Hours on Trump Tax Returns
- DUers Prematurely Celebrate Maddow Trump Tax ‘Revelation’
- ‘They Got Schlonged!’ Limbaugh Goes to Town Mocking ‘Overrated’ Maddow, ‘Lunatic’ Johnston
- Howard Kurtz: Trump Tax Reveal ‘Big-Time Blunder’ by Rachel Maddow
- Okay, Sure: Maddow Blames Audience Expectations for Her Spectacular Fail on Trump’s Tax Return
- NYT Remains Faithful to ‘Scoop’ Maddow, Who Did It Her Way: Tax Fail Part of Successful Strategy
- Boom: Even Liberal Colbert Blasts Rachel Maddow’s Lame ‘Scoop’
The fact that the MRC devoted 12 posts to Maddow’s tax-return reveal within 48 hours after the story aired would seem to indicate the opposite of what it’s trying to tell us — that it really wasn’t the “fail” or “non-story” the MRC repeatedly insists it was.
The MRC is certainly not going to give Maddow credit for doing something no other media organization has done to date, as the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple points out: get Trump to disclose information about his taxes.
The MRC went even further into pro-Trump spin mode with a March 17 post by James Powers asserting that “Trump’s effective tax rate for 2005 was 79 percent” accounting for the $103 million in losses he took (on $151 million in income) and the alternative minimum tax he paid.
Sad, really.