The reaction to Rachel Maddow's format by people with TV trained short-attention spans is almost as interesting as the Trump tax documents she published are. But I am not a tax expert, such as her guest and the man who was sent the documents, David Cay Johnston, so I'm not going to pretend I understand as much as he does about the numbers. The news that he pays a lower tax rate on a massive income than people who make less than a living wage is outrageous enough to begin with.
David Cay Johnston's speculation that Trump might have sent him the document for some reason which might be rationally understood or out of some Trumpian unreality-nonlogic, tells me that both he and Rachel Maddow understood that they might have been being played, and that's the way that people like little Donald Trump jr. are playing it. Though who knows how this is going to turn out in the end. That's one of the problems with Trump world, you don't know if you're being played by master tacticians or people who have as little concept of reality as big Donald. I doubt Trump jr. understands it as well a Maddow and Johnson.
But, when I turned on my computer this morning, the news that came up at the top of the page were that twitterers were disappointed that she didn't present it as old CNN Balloon Boy coverage but rolled it out after setting out the context of why it's important. I clicked on several of the dismissals of the story, in which I found out that the people expressing disappointment were those like a reporter for the sports cable network ESPN, media reporters whose beat is America's Top Chief, not people who would generally listen to Rachel Maddow, at least if their career in ersatz journalism is any indication. I'm wondering why stories by them and others like the Ivy Leage, NYT twerp Michael M. Grynbaum, Jay Yarow from CNBC, junk from CNN and others working at competing networks who are, I read, getting clobbered by Maddow since the elevation of Trump, why are those appearing the top of the page this morning? Is there some Putin-Republican-fascist hacking of search engines going on?
I looked around at a few leftish blogs and read the same annoyance that Rachel Maddow didn't give them the excitement and thrills of a video game at a pacing they wanted. And those are the allegedly higher end blogs. I know they're higher end because I've been reading their regulars say that about themselves for going on two decades. Just about all of them went to college but I'm betting not many of them have recently exercised capacities for paying attention to complicated stuff.
I can say that if these documents don't set the Trump on fire or lead to more, they will probably be used to try to turn Rachel Maddow into a joke among the stupid, the attention deficit and the just stupid that so many have become. I would suspect that, since they discussed the possibility that Trump leaked his own taxes to Johnson that would have figured into their decision to release them as they did. It looks like a bit of a gamble on their part.
If they do lead to other revelations, perhaps others in a position to release more information releasing it, great. I think we have a right to know about the business interests, associations, actions and history that impinges on whether or not the trust given them should have been or should continue. If Maddow releasing them leads to that, it should get her and Johnston the thanks of the American People, something most of their colleagues, such people as young Grynbaum and Yarrow will certainly never earn.
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