The Donald Trump tax return reveal on the Tuesday night (March 14) edition of the Rachel Maddow Show revealed details on the president’s 2005 1040 form.
Democrats and “NeverTrump” Republicans hoping for a bombshell took to Twitter and comments sections across the web to voice their disappointment after Maddow revealed that not only did the president earn a high income, but he also paid higher tax percentage rates than President Barack Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Romney opposed Trump’s candidacy in the primary and was the first to actually call for a release of Trump tax return information.
Romney argued that the then-candidate would not release those numbers because he’s either “not as rich as he says he is” or he’s “not as charitable.”
Maddow’s Trump tax return reveal shed little light on the charitable aspects of Trump’s life, but it did show that he earned over $150 million in income in 2005 and that from that number, he paid approximately 25 percent in federal taxes (about $38 million).
According to Money , President Obama paid just 18.7 percent of his 2015 income in taxes, while Vice President Joe Biden paid 23.3 percent.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, National Review reports , paid just 13.5 percent in federal taxes for 2014. Meanwhile in 2011, Romney paid just 14.1 percent in federal taxes ( hat tip to CNNMoney ).
While it is worth noting the Trump tax return information is just for one year approximately 12 years ago — nowhere close to comprehensive for the president — it did not get the reaction his opponents were hoping for when Maddow announced her bombshell earlier in the day.
Sally Kohn, one of Trump’s biggest media detractors, tweeted this after the reveal was complete.
This return, in isolation, is nothingburger BUT serious kudos to @maddow for hyping story to refocus attention on unanswered questions!
— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) March 15, 2017
As one might expect, conservative Twitter users had a field day with the show’s lack of damning revelations.
Boy, is Trump gonna have a field day tomorrow at his rally.???? “Rachel Maddow” pic.twitter.com/qcNbPqycyq
— Deplorable Zilla???????? (@deplorablezilla) March 15, 2017
Toward the end of the program, when journalist David Cay Johnson appeared to discuss how he acquired the Trump tax return information, Democrats started to consider whether the unknown leaker was the president himself.
Sensing this, Johnson claimed during his segment that he has known the president for years, and that it was “possible” the leak came from Trump himself.
That particular theory received some additional airtime among left pundits later in the evening with a shaken Jessica Tarlov telling Sean Hannity on his Tuesday night program that “perhaps Donald Trump leaked them himself.”
There is precedent for Trump trolling the media as recently as Sept. 16, 2016. On that particular day of his campaign, Trump promised to address the birther controversy he helped to create in 2012 once and for all.
Reporters came to the event at the new Trump International Hotel expecting they would be allowed to ask questions.
The then-Republican frontrunner used most of his time to promote the new hotel, then issued a brief statement acknowledging President Obama was not born in Kenya, and that he was a U.S. citizen.
He then left the stage without taking questions, Vanity Fair reported .
Also, the Washington Post reported in May 2016 that a 1991 interview with someone masquerading as Trump’s publicist was, in fact, the Donald himself, and that he was using the ploy as a means to brag about himself.
So if the Trump tax returns were leaked by the administration, to what end? Some Democrats are now claiming it’s to distract from the potentially negative publicity he could get for the American Health Care Act (AHCA, aka “Trumpcare”), which has not been received well by Democrats and some Republicans.
Democrats urge one another not to get distracted byama President’s Trump’s taxes https://t.co/ygi13mV6DQ pic.twitter.com/STFnZ3lp0O
— CNN (@CNN) March 15, 2017
But what do you think, readers? Do the Trump tax returns come from the White House or one of its opponents? Sound off in the comments section below.
[Featured Image by Gage Skidmore /Flickr Creative Commons/Resized and Cropped/ CC BY-SA 2.0 ]