Let’s be clear about something: Donald Trump should release his tax returns.
However, Hillary Clinton of all people is now railing against Trump for not doing this—and well, this is a good reminder that at every turn this election boils seemingly boils down to the evil of two lessers. Here’s the New York Times report from a few days back, “Hillary Clinton Mocks Donald Trump Over Not Releasing Tax Returns“:
Now the thing is, while it is absurd that Trump isn’t releasing his tax returns, the GOP candidate is not wrong Hillary Clinton has her own issue with hiding shady financial dealings. This includes hiding her tax returns, as Andrew Ferguson noted in the magazine last year. Remember when Hillary Clinton managed to make a $98,000 profit off of a $1,000 investment in cattle futures thanks to political connections? About that:
When it comes to Hillary Clinton, crowing transparency for transparency’s sake is a silly thing for her to brag about. (Again, set aside for a moment that she’s still hiding a lot of her questionable foundation finances and Goldman Sachs speeches.) It’s true that—after some shaming—she now has nearly 40 years of tax returns publicly available. But that doesn’t change the fact that she previously tried to hide tax returns that showed corrupt dealings. And if she’s not hiding them now, she’s asking to be credited for releasing records showing she’s flat-out corrupt, unless there’s some new and magical explanation for this cattle futures deal and what other crooked deals can be found in this pile of records.
Anyway, this is a revealing bit of context for reporters to mention when Hillary Clinton rails against Trump for not releasing his tax returns. I’d chalk it up to media bias, but I suspect that it’s more a function of the fact that there have been so many Clinton scandals that reporters have forgotten the details of most of them. But Hillary should not be allowed to get away with all manner of rank hypocrisy still unexplained malfeasance.
