You might think that—given the chance to chide the star of a competing network—CNN would have called out MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow over her failed, overhyped “scoop” on Donald Trump’s taxes. But nary a discouraging word about Maddow could be heard on CNN this morning. Liberal media solidarity more important than beating the competition?
Instead, commenting this morning on the release of Donald Trump’s 2005 tax return, CNN’s Chris Cuomo described the Alternative Minimum Tax [AMT] he paid as a “benefit” to Trump. It was just the opposite. The AMT Alternative Minimum Tax is designed to prevent people with large incomes from using deductions to reduce their tax liability beyond a certain amount. No matter how little a taxpayer would normally pay, the AMT imposes a higher minimum.
In Trump’s case, but for the AMT, he would have paid only about $5 million in taxes on income of about $150 million. But because of the AMT, he paid about $38 million. So the AMT hurt Trump to the tune of about $33 million. But describing the two pages of the return that were released, Cuomo said “they really just show you what he paid in taxes, what he could have paid if he didn’t have the benefit of the alternative minimum tax.” Benefit? Really? Fake news at its worst.
Note: CNN has also apparently decided to lay off Rachel Maddow for her highly-embarrassing, failed scoop on Trump’s taxes. Maddow had breathlessly hyped the release, only for it to turn into a modern-day version of Geraldo Rivera’s empty Al Capone safe. Far from hurting Trump, as Maddow no doubt had hoped, most in the MSM are conceding that the release helps the president by demonstrating that he earned a lot of money and paid a lot of taxes both in dollar amount and as a percentage of his income.
Have a look at the screencap from this morning’s CNN. It shows a tweet by President Trump’s son, Donald, Jr. In displaying it, CNN highlighted the body of the tweet and the first hashtag. But it didn’t highlight, or mention on air, Donald Jr.’s second hashtag, an allusion to Rachel’s big backfire: #thankyouMaddow.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY
