Again…easy to prove. Just release your tax returns, Don.
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I consider his golfing to probably the best money we can spend as actual tax payers.
Every minute he is golfing he is away from both the levers of power and away from Twitter destabilizing the US and the world.
I think he should just golf from here on out… on us.
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well then don’t you think the rest of the world should chip in too?
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I haven’t seen anyone discussing trump’s immediate response to the NYT report: that this issue was brought up during the last election. He seems to imply that since he wasn’t arrested when it was brought up before the accusation is meaningless, rather than that he got away with it. It’s like if Bill Cosby had said, “Your bringing up me drugging women again? I already denied it, so you can’t use that against me anymore!”
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Twice Brian Morgenstern brings up the fact that Trump paid $70 million in income taxes in 2005 and 2006. But Poppy Harlow does not point out ALL of it was written off in 2010. So he actually paid $0 for those two years. Damn, I am always disappointed by media interviews with Trump’s people.
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Had a busy day so couldn’t treat myself to this exchange until now. If I could I would have paid her a $250 bonus for every time she said “Brian.” She must have said it 30 times, trying to get him to stop bullshitting her.
For Christ’s sake, she quietly eviscerated him. What do you want? That he shoot himself on camera? Burst into flames? She showed he couldn’t back up his bogus assertions. She showed that Trump could refute this article by releasing the actual documents but funnily enough isn’t doing that and never will. What do you want, exactly? People who actually know about how this stuff works have cheering for her since this came out. What do you want?
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The dignity ship has sailed with that one. Gotta give him credit for putting up the Stepford Spox face thru the entire interview.
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So the White House Spokesperson says that the NYT article proved that Trump had no Russia ties. Didn’t he just admit that the article and the source materials were true?
But that would be a true statement, and grounds for immediate expulsion from the club.
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What I want is for reporters to have a better command of all the facts before interviewing Trump officials, so that they can call out lies in real time.
In this case, the lie was a brazen one. Brian Morgenstern said Trump paid $70 million in federal taxes for the years 2005-2007, when in fact he paid $0, because all of it was refunded in 2010. How did Morgenstern dare to make such a clearly false statement, twice, on national TV? Because he knew Poppy would not correct him, because he knows TV journalists rarely go into that much detail in their research for an interview.
I have seen Trump officials use this strategy in interview after interview during the last 4 years. It always works, and leaves me frustrated and yelling at the screen. I am no journalist, yet I knew this was a lie and Poppy didn’t. (I believe I learned about Trump’s tax refund from this snide article by a Trump sycophant: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/obama-wrote-trump-a-73-million-check/ .) TV journalists need to do better research before interviews.
Look, Poppy Harlow did a fantastic job overall. But she, and other journalists, would be even more effective if they had a better grasp of the facts. Watch Jonathan Swan’s or Chris Wallace’s interviews with Trump to see what a difference that makes. Wallace fact-checked Trump in a millisecond when he claimed that the Biden-Sanders platform called for defunding the police, as did Swan on the COVID mortality rates. That is the kind of thing I want to see more of.
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I certainly can’t argue against having the best possible grasp of the facts. 
But I’d make two points. One is that if these Trump people try to make a factual argument at all, it’s based on cherry-picked facts and you can’t know beforehand what they’re likely to be. Just being a TV anchor is a full-time job and I don’t expect her to know this long piece that’s been out since Friday evening backwards and forwards and have a ready counter for every nonsensical argument they could make.
The second point I’d make is you mostly get nowhere trying to trip these people up on a particular point that way. What seems much more effective to me is to go after the whole thesis—in this case, that the story isn’t correct, that rather than nothing or $750 he’s paid large amounts all along. As you graciously acknowledge, overall she did well, in part by saying you could prove the story false by releasing the documents and why won’t you do that? She also, and this to me matters, told him that up until then he had been generally straightforward with her, with the obvious implication that he was not there arguing in good faith that day. I think in a post-truth world it’s not enough to show that a statement is factually incorrect. You have to go after the person’s ability to look and sound legitimate. Trump has squandered his by lying so much for so long. Giuliani as well. I think Kellyanne has as well, and she had outlived her usefulness. This guy was a new face rolling out a factual argument but she zoomed out and said look, you could prove this and you won’t. It’s more than most of them do and when you hear them simply offer a chance to talk their twaddle I think it’s fine to yell, or to criticize some particular failure to do the damn job. But we mostly agree she got this right and really to me that’s the main thing.
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But how do you know that she didn’t know?
Could it be that the way she handled it was a … tactical choice?
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You are probably quite right. I don’t really get the finer aspects of public communication, and am an awful judge of how credible a politician or public figure looks and sounds. I tend to only look at the truth or falsity of their statements of fact, and the soundness of their arguments, while ignoring the 90% of their communication that cannot be reduced to propositional logic.
Yeah, Poppy was probably smart to prosecute the big picture and not be distracted by the minutiae. So I see yours and cervantes’s point.
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But so are you, and I conceded with enthusiasm your main point. And you’re wise to recognize that your own careful weighing of truth and falsity of claims made is rare in the general public. Best example I can give you is Trump himself, a wild and constant liar, who was regarded by many as tending to be honest and forthright because of his tactless jackassery. At least you know where he stands, right? 
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Did she ask him why allegedly being under audit prevented him from releasing tax returns that would supposedly disprove the NYT’s allegations? If they’re lying, Trump has every ability to prove it. His refusal to do so speaks volumes and tells us everything we need to know. It’s perfectly legal to release your tax returns when under audit.
I like Harlow. Yes, she’s not hard on the eyes, but that’s not (100%) why. She has this understated but methodical way of questioning difficult guests that reveals them to be liars and buffoons.
Trump’s spox may as well say “The president absolutely and categorically denies being a pedophile, rapist and pig-fucker and could easily prove it by releasing records that exonerate him, but he’s currently under investigation…for being a pedophile, rapist and pig-fucker, and so is not able to do so presently, but will do so as soon as he’s cleared of being a pedophile, rapist and pig-fucker”.
I was going to vote for Joe Biden, but somebody on the internet said somebody posted that Hunter Biden kicked his dog. Or maybe he knocked their trash can over. I forget the details, but it is clear that Joe Biden is unfit to be President.
Everybody in America: Trumpp isn’t showing his tax return, because that chiseler only paid $750 in income tax.
Mass psychosis is all I can think of.