After nearly two years since the announcement of his intent to run for office, President Donald Trump is still being viciously pursued by the mainstream media, who are convinced there is some “silver bullet” out there that will destroy his movement and bring their shattered world back to their version of normalcy.
However, one by one, every conspiracy theory that they have convinced themselves in true about Trump has blown up in the media’s faces. The Russian hackers, Vladimir Putin connections and now the Trump tax returns have all proven to be at most ineffective for the anti-Trump media forces.
These media personalities are not as smart as they lead the public to believe, as the average person sees a media star and thinks to themselves, “Well, they must know what they’re talking about because they’ve made it this far, so they’re clearly very intelligent.” That may have been true decades ago, but recently media careers have been made based on how progressive and liberal they appear to their constituents.
Take Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, who just yesterday frantically tweeted that she was in possession of Donald Trump’s tax returns and would deliver a bombshell report on her show later in the evening.
BREAKING: We’ve got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC.
(Seriously).
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) March 14, 2017
Maddow’s explosive tweet sent the anti-Trump forces into a frenzy, thinking that they finally have their evidence that Trump worked with the Russians, paid no taxes, isn’t as wealthy as he claimed, and these tax returns are going to prove all of it.
The MSNBC host literally rocked the liberal world, justifying their unwavering faith in the anti-Trump mantra of “Trump stole the election” and worked with the Russians to do so, thus legitimizing their claim that Hillary Clinton should have won. Social media was filled with phrases like “Could this finally bring Trump down” and “This is finally he evidence we’ve been waiting for to bring down Trump”.
Maddow came on camera for her show and triumphantly stated, “What I have here Donald Trump’s tax returns, we have his federal tax returns for one year, for 2005. I believe this is the only set of the president’s federal taxes that reporters have ever gotten a hold of”, she said as she waved around two whole pages of Trump’s 1040 forms and appeared positively giddy like a kid on Christmas.
As we now know Maddow’s report was an epic fail, since Trump’s tax return from 2005 revealed he paid a higher percentage of his income towards federal taxes than his opponents, critics and even media organizations such as MSNBC.
The report by Maddow was so bad that even fellow anti-Trump media outlets blasted her, criticizing her for “over hyping and under delivering“. Extreme left news website Slate even published an article titled “Rachel Maddow Turned a Scoop on Donald Trump’s Taxes Into a Cynical, Self-Defeating Spectacle” along with CNBC publishing “Donald Trump Just Got a Nice Victory, Thanks, of all People, to Rachel Maddow“, in which they openly admit Maddow actually did Trump a favor.
Considering that the outcome the “leak” of Trump’s tax returns could only have resulted in a positive outcome for his image, the theory has started to spread that it was Trump himself who was behind the release.
A journalists was even willing to admit in a CNN interview that “it’s a possibility” Trump was behind the leak.
“Yes,” Pulitzer Prize-winner David Cay Johnston replied when CNN anchor Poppy Harlow asked him if he thought the two pages, which show Trump paid $38 million in taxes on more than $150 million in income that year, could have been sent by the President himself.
“Donald has a long history of leaking things about himself and doing it indirectly and directly,” Johnston told Harlow and Chris Cuomo. “So it’s a possibility.”
I’d be willing to wager that Donald Trump, knowing his tax returns contain nothing controversial, refused to release them during his campaign to create a media frenzy that he knew would result in an all out witch hunt. Indeed, the media has pursued the tax return narrative endlessly, utterly convinced they would reveal direct payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, with notations for bribes and secret campaign funding.
Donald Trump could have led the media to believe there is some sort of “smoking gun” evidence in his tax returns, and then eventually released (or purposefully leak them himself) the returns to the most rapid of Trump media critics, which would only prove to make fools of them when nothing of significance is found.
By Trump creating the scandal around his Trump returns, yet knowing there was no evidence of foul play within them, he could essentially hold a “Trump card” to be used against the media at an opportune time. Trump could at any moment organize a leak of a portion of his returns and then watch as the liberal media works themselves into a fury over it, but eventually is humiliated when nothing of significance in found.
Think about this, the reporter claims he just walked to his mailbox one morning and found a grand total of two pages of Trump’s 1040 tax returns from 2005. If someone was willing to break the law and release Trump’s personal tax returns, then why reveal only two pages that contain absolutely nothing of significance? You would think that if someone were to take the risk of leaking tax returns, then they would at least have leaked some that were more recent and actually contained something of significance.
Rachel Maddow’s “big reveal” turned out to be a gigantic nothing burger with a side of fail fries, and the media’s anti-Trump narrative is now significantly worse off than they were before the announcement.
Trump and his team may very well have been behind this entire tax return release, as evidenced by a preemptive White House press release throwing cold water on Maddow’s announcement.
“You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago. Despite this substantial income figure and tax paid, it is totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns. The dishonest media can continue to make this part of their agenda, while the President will focus on his, which includes tax reform that will benefit all Americans.”
The theory that Trump planned this event is further indicated by his tweet mocking the reporter for finding his tax returns in his mailbox, asking if anyone really believe this happened.
Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, “went to his mailbox” and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2017
An additional benefit to Maddow’s failure is that her debacle will dominate the mainstream media’s news cycle for the entire day, effectively distracting them from their usual attacks on Trump.
This certainly wouldn’t be the first time Trump has controlled and manipulated the narrative, as during his campaign last year he tricked the media into thinking he was making a major announcement on Obama’s birth certificate, but ended up using the breaking media coverage to present veterans speaking in his favor. Trump pitched his magnificent DC hotel, and then ushered in veteran after veteran to endorse him, explaining that war veterans are not the “deplorables” Hillary Clinton labeled his supporters. The media covered it, until they realized what Trump was doing, then they cut away.
Trump effectively “trolled” the media with this strategy and planning, which gave him free airtime on all major networks while they were convinced they had an explosive scandal on their hands. This strategy sounds eerily familiar to the situation that unfolded with Rachel Maddow and Trump’s tax returns.
Unfortunately many anti-Trumpers will not be discouraged by Maddow’s tax blunder, and will remain convinced for the rest of their lives that Trump is in league with the Russians, which his tax returns must surely prove. Even if Trump released his tax returns for the past 20 years and nothing suspicious was found, the core anti-Trump groups would simply concoct another conspiracy theory in order push their narratives even harder. They will stop at nothing to feed their distorted beliefs that Donald Trump is a Russian operative, because these are the same people who religiously believe every headline coming out of CNN and The New York Times.
So did President Trump purposefully leak his own tax returns in what could only be describes as a brilliant 3D chess move in order to discredit the hostile media? It doesn’t seem all that unlikely, as who would go through the trouble to leak only 2 pages of Trump’s returns that show absolutely nothing negative, and would only serve to further benefit the president’s message while diminishing the media’s attacks on him.