Rachel Maddow releases Trump tax returns

On March 14, 2017 at 7:36pm Rachel Maddow, host of, The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC tweeted out “@Maddow – BREAKING: We’ve got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC (Seriously)”.

According to Forbes.com, Maddow’s tweet was retweeted over 85,000 times, it was the trending topic on twitter before she went live at 9pm. While on live she reviewed the details from the 1040 from Trump’s 2005 tax return.

Donald J. Trump is positioning himself to become the first president in over 40 years to refuse to release his tax returns in office. Former President Nixon was the president to release his all his tax returns while in office. President Trump did promise to release all his tax returns after the election, but then backfired.

Maddow started going over his returns, which showed that Trump reported over $150 million in income that year and paid $5.3 million in federal income tax and $31 million in alternative minimum tax. But this is only half of that 2005 tax return, Trump had paid $38 million in taxes that year, and that he had taken a large write-down of $103 million.

David Cay Johnston, The person who got a hold on Trump’s return was, He is an American investigative reporter and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting. He tweeted out, @DavidCayJ – “On @maddow I’ll break a big story about Trump and his taxes – 9PM eastern via @DCReportMedia I’ll be on @lawrence, too”. Johnston said he obtained the 1040 in the mail and passed it on to Maddow. He suggested that Trump had sent him the document.

The White House did confirm that this is Trump’s 2005 tax return. The White house did have a statement saying this publication was illegal. “You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” the official said Tuesday. Trump weighed in on the matter Wednesday morning, tweeting out, “Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, ‘went to his mailbox’ and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!”