![]() ![]() Maddow wasn’t even off the air - MSNBC kept her on for more than her hour to continue discussing the story - when she came under attack by one of Trump’s most vocal defenders on television: Fox’s Sean Hannity. He speculated that Trump - or someone authorized by the president - could have been a possible source of the leaked document which he said “came in the mail over the transom.” She brought Johnston on her show to discuss the return. Maddow said that First Amendment protections of the press gave her the right to broadcast the information. The White House pronounced Maddow desperate for ratings and said she had violated a law against the unauthorized release or publishing of federal tax returns. “It ought to give you pause that his explanations have never made any factual sense,” Maddow said. Trump failed to release his taxes during the campaign, claiming that he was under audit by the Internal Revenue Service and he had been advised against it. She said she hoped it could be a first step toward more information about Trump’s taxes being released. The exclusive she eventually revealed in the tax returns was little more than the White House had announced before she had gone on the air. This has been a winning formula lately, since Maddow’s ratings in February were the highest in the nine years her show has been on the air. ![]() For long-time watchers of her show, the structure was familiar: Maddow frequently opens with long, detailed stories that follow many paths. It felt vaguely like a bait-and-switch and there were some complaints on social media that Maddow was taking too long to get to the point. She pieced together theories on what his returns could show - sources of his income and whether he was beholden to any foreign sources, whether he personally stood to gain from any changes in tax policies that the Trump administration sought to enact. She spent nearly 20 minutes explaining why many people believe it important that Trump release his tax returns, as presidents have done since Richard Nixon in the 1970s. “It’s been a hullaballoo around here,” Maddow said as she opened her show. David Cay Johnston, founder of the web site and a longtime investigative reporter and author of the critical book, “The Making of Donald Trump,” had received a copy of two pages from Trump’s 2005 federal tax return in the mail from an unknown source.īefore Maddow even went on the air, the White House confirmed the documents were real and stole the headline by saying that Trump’s income exceeded $150 million in 2005 and that he paid $38 million in income taxes that year. It was actually another reporter’s exclusive, and more limited than the tweet made it sound. That teaser spread like wildfire, and within the hour, MSNBC was running a countdown clock on its screen counting down the minutes to a “Trump Taxes Exclusive.” Less than 90 minutes before her show on Tuesday, Maddow tweeted that “we’ve got Trump’s tax returns. With a single tweet, she set in motion a social media storm, compelled the White House to undercut her by releasing some of President Donald Trump’s tax return information, was accused of breaking the law, was attacked by Fox News Channel and likely drew one of her biggest audiences. NEW YORK: For a brief, breathless moment Tuesday night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was at the center of the political media universe. ![]()
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