Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Did Trump Leak His Taxes?

Trumpcare is in peril.  Daily reports are released detailing conflict and strife within the new administration.  Almost two months in Trump's nominees and cabinet have been plagued with scandals and dogged with the looming presence of Russian interference (and/or cooperation from the Trump Campaign).  And now for the distraction:  Trump's taxes.

Well, sort of.

It seemed like Kellyanne Conway was Trump's major cheerleader and deflector, hitting the news circuit spouting any kind of nonsense that popped in her head and the media would run with it.  Meanwhile Trump and his team would silently sign off on controversial Executive Orders, or his nominees would demonstrate how clearly unqualified they were, or some other thing would happen that was more newsworthy than say Conway claiming microwaves can be turned into cameras.  But when the media started to feel burned by her and her lack of substance she started to become less effective.  Trump needed a fix, and fast.

Cue in the leaked taxes.

Trump's taxes were a big issue on the campaign trail and he constantly toyed with the idea of releasing them, but then he would periodically draw back and then offer them up again, but with caveats.  Then after he was elected they were taken back off the table.  Liberals and critics of Trump believe there is some extremely damaging information in those documents while conservatives believe it is a witch hunt.  Considering the numerous scandals that have broken in the administration in the last couple months, especially in regards to Russia, where there is smoke there is fire and the Trump team is doing a piss poor job getting rid of that smoke.  Instead of being transparent he is playing the public like the dog from Up, constantly throwing squirrels at us, and this new "leak" can quite possibly be one of them.

Think about this - Rachel Maddow teased the leak of the tax documents leading up to her show.  Not only were the copies (only the first couple pages) marked "client copy," right before the show was aired Trump released information regarding the taxes.

This is like those old crime novels where the suspect comes forward with information about the crime that they could not possibly know.  So here are the possibilities - Trump leaked the documents and therefor knew what was going to be on Rachel Maddow's show or Trump didn't know and released some information in an attempt to soften the blow of the leak and try to gain control of the narrative.

But what if Maddow was bluffing?