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Rachel Maddow Tag

Rachel Maddow's big SCOOP on Donald Trump's tax return turned into an embarrassing flop, with mockery coming at her from all directions, Rachel Maddow’s career committed suicide live on national TV tonight. Maddow did the unthinkable -- bringing together pro-Trump and anti-Trump together in horror at the horrendous clickbait. What was key was how Maddow herself build up the expectations with a pre-show tweet:

Appearing on this evening's Hardball, David Johnston, who received part of Donald Trump's leaked 2005 tax return, said "I suspect" that Trump leaked "pornographic" photos of Melania to the New York Post.
DAVID JOHNSTON: At first I thought Donald might have leaked it [the tax return], but his reaction in turning what could have been for him a terrific story about himself, he's managed to squander by his reaction to this, so clearly he didn't leak. When Donald leaks things, he doesn't complain about them. He didn't complain about the pictures of his wife, the pornographic pictures that were published in the New York Post. He didn't complain about the three pages of state tax returns that got out last year. And I suspect both of those came from him.

Rachel Maddow has a history of claiming big scoops which then flop. There was the debunked 2012 big scoop about supposed GOP wrongdoing in Michigan. And the 2014 big scoop that the Koch Brothers were behind Florida groups pushing drug testing for welfare recipients, which was not true. We covered the Florida non-scoop big scoop, Rachel Maddow’s come undone with Koch Derangement Syndrome.

Rachel Maddow has wondered out loud whether President-elect Trump might be under the influence of Russia. On her MSNBC show this evening, Maddow suggested that Trump might betray the most sensitive intelligence to the Russians—including the identity of US spies. She questioned whether US intelligence agencies should provide Trump with such information.

This is a tough time to be a progressive. There is a widespread mental breakdown in nests of radicalism, like Ithaca. I take no pleasure in that. Seriously. Come on you guys, seriously, no joy whatsoever. I'm not like John Ekdahl. https://twitter.com/JohnEkdahl/status/796860473945812997

Uh-oh: looks like I've had something of a mind-meld with Rachel Maddow . . . During Bill Clinton's DNC speech tonight, I tweeted "the spectacle of Bill Clinton telling the romantic story of how he met, wooed and married Hillary is deeply creepy." When the speech ended, Rachel Maddow, on MSNBC, called the top of the speech "shocking and weird," describing the beginning of the speech as "controversial." Maddow was miffed that Clinton spoke of "a girl," "the girl" and built "her whole political story for the whole first half of the speech around her marriage to him."

Where does Rachel Maddow's feminist solidarity end? When a woman has the audacity to support a Republican . . . On MSNBC, commenting on tonight's RNC, Maddow twice mocked speaker Natalie Gulbis, a professional golfer, for her current modest world ranking of about 500. In doing so, Maddow ignored the fact that Gulbis is a former #6 on the LPGA money list, has won four professional tournaments and at one point placed in the top 10 in four consecutive major championships. If Tiger Woods spoke for Trump, I suppose Maddow would dismiss him as "the 628th golfer in the world" [his current ranking.]

We have addressed Koch Derangement Syndrome before.  One of the most obsessive purveyors was Think Progress. Now Rachel Maddow has caught the bug, and it's eating away at her reputation as the intellectual giant, ahem, of MSNBC. She's come undone. The short version is that Maddow went all in claiming the Koch brothers were behind a Florida law requiring drug testing for welfare recipients.  Except that it wasn't true, and her explanation was lacking in logic or credibility. The logic is so convoluted it's hard to summarize.  Basically it involved participation by the Florida Foundation for Government Accountability (“FFGA”) in the State Policy Network (SPN), to which the Kochs contributed about $40,000 over several years.   FFGA defended the drug testing law.  Maddow blamed the Kochs. (Video here) This was the worst form of guilt by association -- that some group involved in an issue was a participant in a larger group to which the Kochs contributed.