The New York Times decided late Sunday night to take another crack at turning President Trump’s tax returns into a political issue, so I guess it’s time for my semiregular reminder for the national media that voters don’t care about seeing the president’s filings with the IRS.
That’s especially true when everything we’ve heard about them so far has been painfully boring.
The main takeaway from the New York Times‘s lengthy report on several years’ worth of Trump’s tax information is that “Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets.” The paper said that the documents “do not reveal his true wealth” and don’t “reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.”
OK. What now?
The article, authored by three reporters, attempted to make up for the lack of news by noting that Trump-owned companies over the years have claimed millions of dollars in losses. But it also said that Trump brought in millions of dollars through other means, like his starring role on NBC’s The Apprentice, golf courses, and licensing deals.
Even though people have said in surveys that they think Trump should release his tax returns, there’s not a shred of evidence that anyone actually cares about them.
During the Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders released 10 years of tax returns. That’s probably news to at least half the people reading this.
Trump, during the 2016 campaign, gave a middle finger to the tradition of major party presidential nominees releasing their tax returns. He won the White House.
And each time we’ve heard about some would-be explosive new revelation about Trump’s financial history, the bang ends up being like one of those toy guns with a flag that pops out.
Remember Rachel Maddow’s major scoop that she had obtained a copy of Trump’s 2005 federal tax return? What we found was that Trump had paid a higher effective tax rate than either Sanders or former President Barack Obama.
After the ensuing backlash from her loyal viewers for the letdown, Maddow blamed them for getting their hopes up.
Remember that painfully long New York Times investigative piece in 2018? The paper dedicated three of its reporters to spend a year combing through financial records and talking with sources to find that Trump’s father avoided paying a lot of taxes and gave his children a lot of money.
The New York Times published a separate “11 Takeaways” story and a “How Times Journalists Uncovered the Original Source of the President’s Wealth” article to accompany the deep investigation. The paper even worked with Showtime for a documentary on the same topic.
Did you even hear about it? The general public reacted to the investigation by hitting the snooze button. NPR reporter Domenico Montanaro acknowledged that the New York Times piece had “the least impact” because of “the lack of apparent caring or lack of surprise.”
David Betras was the Democratic Party chairman of Mahoning County in Youngstown, Ohio. He told the New York Times last year that voters in his very important state “don’t care about his taxes — they just don’t.”
This has been the national media’s reminder: Voters don’t care about his taxes. They just don’t.
