Donald Trump Tweets About Snoop Dogg Video, Rachel Maddow Tax Return Story
It’s only Tuesday, but it’s already shaping up to be a busy week on Twitter for President Donald Trump.
On Wednesday the president took to his favorite social media platform to respond to a new music video from rapper Snoop Dogg and a segment from the latest installment of MSNBC‘s The Rachel Maddow Show. He was not happy about either.
Snoop Dogg’s latest music video — a remix of the song “Lavender” by Canadian instrumental jazz hip hop group BadBadNotGood — features a Donald Trump lookalike wearing clown makeup. Towards the end of the video, Snoop Dogg points a fake gun at the Donald Trump clown and then pulls the trigger. The gun lets out a loud pop, and then a small flag with “Bang” written on it rolls out of the barrel. The screen goes black, and the music stops for a second. Then the video resumes.
Snoop Dogg is facing backlash for mocking Donald Trump in his latest video https://t.co/Cnm8g1TRR0 pic.twitter.com/OA1otLAmW5
— Rap-Up (@RapUp) March 15, 2017
At the end of the video, the Trump impersonator in clown makeup is seen chained up as Snoop Dogg and his friends, including someone who looks an awful lot like Margot Robbie from her role as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad, stand around a car smoking. Michael Rapaport also appears in the video.
Trump fired off an early morning tweet Wednesday in response to reports of the video that began circulating on Infowars and other news sites Monday.
“Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama? Jail time!” the tweet said.
Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama? Jail time!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2017
Just a few minutes before tweeting about Snoop Dogg, Trump took aim at MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. In Tuesday night’s installment of the liberal-leaning news station’s popular Rachel Maddow Show, Maddow revealed leaked information from Donald Trump’s 2005 tax returns.
After hyping the release of the information throughout the day, the big reveal ultimately fell flat for many of Trump’s critics who had hoped the documents would contain damning information about Trump possibly exaggerating his income or perpetrating shady tax avoidance tactics.
Instead, the summary of Trump’s tax filings from 2005 show that he earned a little over $150 million that year and paid $38 million in taxes, or roughly 25 percent. As the Inquisitr previously reported, that put Trump in a higher tax bracket than several other prominent politicians — from both sides of the aisle — based on filings from some years that have been made public.
“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).”
Without having all of the tax returns for every year, it’s impossible to determine if Trump consistently paid higher taxes than the other politicians listed, or if the limited availability of complete records skews the numbers. It should also be noted that Sanders’ lower tax bracket is undoubtedly due to his more modest lifestyle and income.
The New York Times did note, however, that Trump claimed $100 million in financial losses that year, which could very well have benefited him when it came to paying his taxes.
“By claiming losses, Mr. Trump apparently saved millions of dollars in taxes that he would otherwise have owed,” the Times wrote.
Rachel Maddow turned a scoop on Donald Trump’s taxes into a self-defeating spectacle: https://t.co/5F1e3mjquC pic.twitter.com/v7iKVvNnbm
— Slate (@Slate) March 15, 2017
Even if Maddow’s report on Trump’s tax returns felt like a “non-story”— some have even suggested Trump leaked the documents himself as a distraction from his struggling healthcare proposal or other negative news coverage — it nevertheless got under President Trump’s skin.
Trump tweeted the following, falling back on his standard attack on the media.
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
President Trump’s tweets about the Snoop Dogg video and Rachel Maddow’s coverage of his tax returns had racked up tens of thousands of likes and retweets by the time this article posted.
[Featured Image by Alex Wong/Getty Images]
