Maddow: People disappointed by Trump story expected too much

NEW YORK — Rachel Maddow says that if people felt let down by her story about President Donald Trump’s 2005 tax document it’s more because of the weight of expectation than anything she did.

The MSNBC host found herself in the odd position Wednesday of defending herself from criticism following one of the biggest-ever scoops for her show. Maddow’s show revealed, through reporter David Cay Johnston, two pages of tax return information that showed Trump earned $150 million in 2005 and paid $38 million in income taxes that year. Trump has steadfastly refused to release his tax returns.

Maddow’s tweet less than 90 minutes before her show that “we’ve got Trump’s tax returns” set off a social media frenzy. Although a subsequent tweet specified it was only two pages from one year’s returns, expectations were sky high. Maddow told the AP that she never misrepresented what she had.

“Because I have information about the president doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a scandal,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that it’s damning information. If other people leapt to that conclusion without me indicating that it was, that hype is external to what we did.”

Source: Washington Post

WashPost Reader:
Wonderful spin – the show hyped the tax return story prior to running, generating higher ratings and likely new viewers. Then, the tax return story turns out NOT to be the "smoking gun" people thought it would be, and Ms. Maddow blames her viewers for expecting too much.

Then, she doubles down and claims that Trump is obsessed with his taxes?!?! I think Trump is an empty suit, and a presidential embarrassment. But, I also try to be fair-minded. Ms. Maddow and MSNBC just conned their viewers, and then put the blame on them. That is shameful and, frankly, bad for business. [..]

Hype: "to stimulate, excite, or agitate; to promote or publicize extravagantly" – Merriam-Webster

Slate:
At 7:36 p.m. Tuesday, Rachel Maddow tweeted, “BREAKING: We've got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC. (Seriously),”

Did Maddow have Donald Trump’s 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 Maddow’s show? […]

(On a side-note)…….

Can't speak as a "liberal" because I do not now, nor have I ever identified as, a "Liberal." In fact, depending on the subject matter, I can take a liberal, or moderate or conservative position. But I can say that in an ideal world, I identify mostly as a Conservative Democrat (truly an endangered species). Count me among those Americans who feel that no one is served well by "gotcha" tv..

Just give me the facts, spare me the hype, and I'm good.

Excerpt:

The longer Maddow went on, ever deeper into a conspiratorial thicket, the clearer it became that whatever tax returns Maddow had, they weren’t 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 Rivera.

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 importance—because we weren’t, in fact, watching a matter of national importance, just a cable news show trying to set a ratings record.

Trump’s tax returns, whatever information they happen to contain, constitute a major scoop. Maddow’s social media team ensured the highest possible ratings for that scoop. But if ever a story should have been delivered in a stentorian, fuddy-duddy, nonpartisan manner, this was it. In positioning it as a grand revelation, a vital step in comprehending Trump’s corruption, MSNBC created an exceedingly cynical spectacle. By playing into the network’s loyal liberal audience’s fantasy that there exists a Trump silver bullet, it instead delivered Trump a positive news cycle—the guy pays taxes! Who knew!—amidst the debacle of the American Health Care Aact, along with more evidence that the media is aligned against him.
[…] – Slate.

President Donald Trump’s personal attorney on Wednesday challenged MSNBC host Joe Scarborough to prove his assertion that the “Trump camp” was behind the leak of two pages from the president’s 2005 tax returns.

Another MSNBC host, the commentator Rachel Maddow, devoted her show on Tuesday night to the returns, which showed that Trump paid about $38 million in federal income taxes on $150 million in income in 2005, after writing off more than $100 million in losses. After Maddow publicized her plans to detail some Trump tax returns on Twitter ahead of the show, the White House released a statement acknowledging as much.

The reporter David Cay Johnston, who said he received the returns in the mail, suggested on Maddow’s show Tuesday that Trump may have leaked them himself. Some commentators have wondered the same thing aloud, noting that the story might be overall good for Trump, since it showed that he paid tens of millions of dollars in taxes. The leak also did not include the parts of the returns that detail where his income came from or where he had invested.

Scarborough has embraced a similar theory, and he aired it Wednesday morning on Twitter.

“This one tax return is not bad for him because he cherry picked one return from over a decade ago and had it leaked to the press,” Scarborough wrote on Twitter. “The Trump camp released one positive tax return to distract from Russia hearings and the Trumpcare meltdown. That's painfully obvious.”

That prompted the challenge from longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who tweeted, “I know who has his taxes. You better have proof to back up your claim and big mouth!”

In response, Scarborough tweeted: "1. Read the First Amendment 2. Save your dumb thug routine for someone who gives a damn." – Politico