Sounds like a huge deal to you.
I knew before the show. As soon as I saw the headline I assumed this must have been released by him or his people and wouldn’t show anything damning. It’s just more distraction.
If we had his (now available for release) tax forms to look at, we could see if his claim included any year.
Trump claimed an income of $557mil ‘over the last year’ in a Federal Election Commission filing in 2016, but without details. I also don’t know when or if he ever said that was ‘usually’ his income though. AFAIK almost all the back and forth between Trump and skeptics on specific numbers has been his net worth which the same release said was over $10bil v ~$2-4 billion estimates by financial media outlets like Bloomberg, Forbes, and The Economist in recent years though some people claim it’s lower still.
$150mil in taxable income in a given year, especially without all the back up schedules, doesn’t particularly confirm or refute any of those net worth estimates. And when all is said done, and outside Trump’s head, all the net worth estimates represent a very rich person, though not anywhere near the richest around or richest ever.
The story is a fizzle in terms of being a ‘big revelation’. That’s obvious. How many people really care if Rachel Maddow is still as credible in the eyes of people who viewed her as credible to begin with, or ever heard of her (a minority of the electorate I’d wager), less obvious.
Point well taken.
Yes, while some of Trump’s team might try to point and scream “credibility problem”, it belies the fact that they have themselves a GIGANTIC credibility problem.
[RachelMaddow] One might even say… its YU-uuge… [/RachelMaddow] 
(Thats the High Road btw. Me? I don’t have to worry about ratings or bosses or someone in headphones screaming in a booth… so I am MORE that free to not only agree with you that they have a credibility problem… but to name the 800 lb gorilla on the room no one wants to talk about.
That would be that the Trump Team also has what amounts to a GIGANTIC STUPIDITY problem.
I might even say it’s YU-uuge. )
Wrong. She was #1 in the cable news show ratings last week.
Can you hear her now?
This, exactly. It made her look foolish, and it played right into Trump’s hands.
I don’t watch Maddow much, and I knew she is prone to repetition and teasers (which drives me crazy and is one of the reasons I don’t watch her much)–but when she says I HAVE THIS BOMBSHELL and she STILL can’t come to the point, it’s evident this is not just her shtick, it’s that she doesn’t have anything to say. We were watching because our son told us SOMETHING BIG was about to be announced, but after five minutes of repetition and teasers and innuendo I turned to my wife and said, “Well, she’s got nothing.”
I’m sure her producers played a big role in this debacle (RATINGS!!! if nothing else), but I can’t help thinking that this is symptomatic of Maddow’s big weakness…which is that Maddow is one of those people (we’ve all known them :)) who thinks she’s always the smartest one in the room. (I know I’m not the only viewer who thinks she comes across as smug and condescending.) And she may indeed often BE the smartest one in the room. But somewhere along the line it happens to everybody, no matter how smart, that they’re in a room with someone who, at that moment at least, is smarter than they are. And if you don’t think that can happen, well, you’re vulnerable to being played. As seems to have happened here.
Not to be Thready McThreadshitter, but I didn’t watch it, don’t watch televised news in general (except in the gym locker room, where the only other viewing options are ESPN and some ancient Korean guy’s pendulous scrotum), and do all I can to avoid looking at video news online, precisely because of this sort of crap.
I can scan a print article and determine within seconds whether it’s of any value, and nothing gets my First World choler churning more than being forced to wait through endless minutes of someone yammering on their meandering route to the point, whether it’s Rachel Maddow, a co-worker, or some random DIY doofus on YouTube demonstrating how to countersink a screw.
I agree that this is just the record for one year. That’s why I said it’s evidence rather than proof.
During one of the debates with Clinton, Trump said he made $694,000,000 in 2016. Previously during the campaign he said he had made $557 million in 2015 and $362 million in 2014.
There’s no clear contradiction here. It’s possible all of these figures, including the ones on his 2005 1040, are true. His income may be increasing every year.
But I think it’s worth noting that the figures Trump claimed without offering any proof are two, three, and four times higher than the figure that’s been documented. Again, it’s possible that the lowest figures are somehow the only ones that get released. Or it’s possible that these aren’t the lowest figures; that they’re typical figures and Trump significantly exaggerates his wealth in situations where he doesn’t have to provide proof. Or it’s even possible that this particular document was leaked at Trump’s direction because it’s atypically high. For all we know, Trump may normally make only twenty or thirty million a year and the $150 million he made in 2005 was a good year for him.
That link does nothing to refute the statement I made, that probably most voters in the US have never heard of Rachel Maddow. Even if she was regularly first in cable news ratings, which she’s not, 2.6 million viewers is a tiny % of the electorate. The only reason a lot more people have heard of Bill O’Reilly is that the left makes such a point of criticizing him, pearl clutching over various statements he makes, and playing up his personal scandals, which Maddow doesn’t have. I still very much doubt over 50% of US voters could tell you who Rachel Maddow was, and a much smaller % than half would care about her ‘credibility’ as it related to what they thought of Trump. ‘Breaking’ a nothing story about Trump certainly doesn’t change that.
And perhaps coincidentally, or not, the figure he generally gives as net worth is similarly a low single digit multiple of estimates from Bloomberg News, Forbes and The Economist. The two could be directly related though in the following way. A reasonable person with all the facts (none of the outside estimators have ever had access to) could view illiquid ‘brand dependent’ Trump asset A as worth $500mil and another that it’s worth 1bil, maybe Trump says it’s worth $1.5bil. And by the same token Trump might quote his ‘income’ including unrealized appreciation of assets, which would be different than taxable income (arguably misleading but not outright false to include in my ‘income’ last year’s unrealized gains not just my 1040 AGI if someone asks and assuming I’d want to say, which I wouldn’t, but I’m not Trump 
)
Anyway I wonder at this point the end game. This issue didn’t prevent him winning. But it’s going to be a big factor in his undoing in 2020 if it’s finally ‘proven’ over the next 4 yrs that he’s very rich but not as rich as he says? I doubt it. And while the typical Rachel Maddow fan might be sure Trump’s ‘disastrous’ presidency so far has already greatly reduced the value of assets of his dependent on his brand…the sad fact from those people’s POV might be that those assets are still worth a lot more now than back when everyone (including Trump probably) thought he’d lose.
This seems to me like closing the barn door on the dead horse, or something like that.
As soon as I read the followup Tweet, which occurred right after the initial tweet and before the show started.
That’s an MSNBC thing, by the way, not a Maddow thing. Even their daytime shows play ultra-annoying games with the allocation of commercials. It’s usually 10-15 minutes uninterrupted at the top of the hour, then maybe one or two more 5 minutes segments (all separated by commercials). Then in the second half hour, it’s five minutes commercials, 10-second news teaser, five more minutes of commercials, then a three-minute news segment, then four minutes of commercials, another 10-second teaser, six minutes of commercials, a one-minute news story, then the final five minutes of commercials (“we’ll be right back with more news”) followed by a 40-second news-free happy-talk handover to the host of the next hour.
I’m not exaggerating.
So, blame Maddow for the Trump Tax story roll-out, sure–but don’t blame her for the irritating teasers-format. That is company policy.
Thanks for the info, Sherrerd. I think by “teasers” I may be referring to something different from you, so I probably have the wrong word. I mean the mid monologue repetition of “what we are about to show you, which no other show or network has” and “as you will see momentarily” and “you’ll see in a moment how this all fits together.” Not something separate, which I think is what you’re referring to, but something integral to the monologue.
Is there a more accurate word than teasers? I don’t know much about broadcast journalism.
Oh, I see. (Yes, though I generally enjoy Maddow’s slow-build show openings, this one went overboard.)
As for the terminology–I may have it wrong, myself, in calling the 10-second ‘when we return, we’ll tell you about the deadly danger posed by a household object you may have in your hand right now’ islands of show between seas of commercials, “teasers.” Perhaps someone will come along and supply the correct terms.
Let’s be honest, anything is possible with Trump:
- He is citing numbers for one, more than one, or all of his corporations, not his personal income.
- He is stating gross, not net, income.
- He is telling the truth and he really did make that much money
- He is lying
- He is saying things he heard on a right wing radio show
- A combination of the above things.
It was Fake News, or at least Fake Analysis. The AMT segment was ridiculous.
I’m not claiming any great insight or prescience, but I knew that ANY leak of Trump’s taxes would be a non-story story. Not because I think Trump is remotely a good person, or anything like that. It’s more that NO leak of a famous person’s taxes has ever been a big deal, for one. Any expectation that we would see a notation in his taxes about having received a billion ruble bribe from Putin, or anything approaching the revelations that everyone desperately wanted to have, after all the fuss, was silly.
About the worst “revelation” I remember coming out of ANY politicians taxes, was when it was learned that Bill Clinton took a two dollar deduction for donating his used boxer shorts.
Really, the whole political game that has been played for a long time now, over politicians revealing their taxes to “prove” how honest they are, has never been worth the effort. It only became a “thing” with Trump at all, because he refused to play along.
I’m not claiming any great insight or prescience, but I knew that ANY leak of Trump’s taxes would be a non-story story. Not because I think Trump is remotely a good person, or anything like that. It’s more that NO leak of a famous person’s taxes has ever been a big deal, for one. Any expectation that we would see a notation in his taxes about having received a billion ruble bribe from Putin, or anything approaching the revelations that everyone desperately wanted to have, after all the fuss, was silly.
About the worst “revelation” I remember coming out of ANY politicians taxes, was when it was learned that Bill Clinton took a two dollar deduction for donating his used boxer shorts.
Really, the whole political game that has been played for a long time now, over politicians revealing their taxes to “prove” how honest they are, has never been worth the effort. It only became a “thing” with Trump at all, because he refused to play along.
Trump made “refuse to play along” his thing. And got elected for it.