Rachel hooked people in with a vague but beguiling statement that she knew would be massively interpreted in a way that would guarantee boffo ratings at the opening of the show.
She could have tweeted, “BREAKING: We’ve got the first two pages of Trump’s 2005 tax returns,” but that wouldn’t have generated nearly the amount of interest, would it?
I think she was more affected by Trump’s response as a pre-emptive strike on her upcoming reporting, than the report on the taxes actually provided as a result.
As far as I’m concerned, everyone should know Trump is mobbed up and should be in jail and not in the White House…but hey, whatchagonnado?
Did Trump “leak” the two pages? They show he paid taxes. But critical information about source of income, debt, charity, etc. are not in those 2 pages. Hmmmm!
The set up,is, the Oval Office leaked the docs to Johnson (sp) and he went to MSNBC with the docs. As was noted above, if one wants to deflect from bad news, e.g., the CBO report on Trumpcare, put another new shiny in front of the media to make the bad news go away.
Sure, the WH did say some bad things about the release. I completely agree. More of the cover up. Part of the script.
Yeah. He does seem rather calm about this particular release. Where’s that old Trumpian flamethrowing outrage. Kinda tepid response from all indications. Sad.
I know we all want this to go quickly, I do too, but it’s not going to come out as quickly as we’d like. However, be patient, it’s coming. Each drip adds to the bucket and emboldens others who will bring forth other info, the snowball is rolling down the hill and picking up speed. Hang in there.
And, it will distract and put the WH on defensive and create higher demand for him to release his taxes and educates people on things such as now that he is…errrrrr…has the job he has…he can no longer hide behind audit etc.
Tonight may not have been the end all be all we want but it moves things forward. It’s putting more pressure on Mitch, he sees what’s coming and THAT is worth it for me. This drip drip drip stresses Mitch out and will push him to do what needs to be done. Keep the big picture in mind.
I just followed the Guardian blog, TL and here, and my thought is it was so underwhelming it even can’t serve as a distraction… (if it was meant it to be by them). It just doesn’t seem to have a staying power.
Yes, Trump can claim he is clean all he wants. But the fact is he hasn’t released any of his full tax returns in any meaningful way, and he and those surrounding him has countless shady ties with Russia. That doesn’t change.
So my hope is, tomorrow morning, another Russia bombshell is dropped and everyone will talk about it all day while the rebellion keeps mounting against their crap bill.
This could backfire. The WH will keep the year vague, but make news out of the fact that there was nothing criminal in it. And Rachel looks kind of silly making a whole show out of it.
My interp of the set up is the scenario, not the evidence. In this case the evidence is very real, but the very real docs were released by the WH and made to look as though they were leaked. The WH then comes out with a bunch of criticism of the leak, accusing Rachel of doing it for ratings, etc. The scenario is the set up, not the evidence.
Someone may have said this already, but by releasing the info on the returns before Maddow disclosed the returns, Trump probably made disclosure of the returns lawful. Idiot.
OK, fine. My definition is someone leaks fake documents, and of course that destroys the credibility of the reporter. The fact that the docs show nothing obviously bad, supports the idea that the WH leaked them. But there’s no “setup” here.
