All Episodes Discussion: 2017 Season

[attica]

In my ongoing effort to cast the movie (okay, so two posts makes it 'ongoing'), I think the obvious choice to play Ambassador Dan Fried is well known character actor Jeffrey DeMunn.

Okay, based on Rachel's reporting about the ALLEGED quid pro quo, I'm feeling secure that the Russian connection stuff would fall under treason charges if ever prosecuted. Although I wish she'd get somebody on the show to explicitly draw it out, criminal justice-wise. We true crime buffs need a fix!

I do appreciate Rachel's matter-of-fact insistence on calling the Muslim Ban a Muslim Ban and not weasel-wording it with 'executive order travel ban' or somesuch.

Edited March 10, 2017 by attica

[teddysmom]

Quote

Did Rachel really, really have to prop up the reanimated corpse of Andrea Bitchell to make the point that the administration is dodging the media? 

Thank you!  "Andrea is a really nice person".  Blech. 

I get she shouldn't slam her coworkers on air, but come on. 

Between that and the Greta love, maybe Rachel should be on our side of the tv screen and see how what they say comes across. 

[meowmommy]

I am bemused by the fact that almost every night, about midway through the show,  an ad runs for David Horowitz's book on 45.  I'm trying to imagine the person who watches Rachel Maddow but also wants to spend money to read a Trumpkin slurpfest.  It would be like buying ad time for Stronger Together on Hannity.

Edited March 11, 2017 by meowmommy

[ScoobieDoobs]

On 3/10/2017 at 2:25 PM, teddysmom said:

Thank you!  "Andrea is a really nice person".  Blech. 

I get she shouldn't slam her coworkers on air, but come on. 

Between that and the Greta love, maybe Rachel should be on our side of the tv screen and see how what they say comes across. 

I don't really get the Andrea Mitchell hate, but I wouldn't put her in the same category as Greta, who's just another asshole trying to blast out her own right-wing propaganda bullshit agenda.  It pisses me off endlessly that MSNBC has given her a platform to spout her bullshit.

In the awkward scene Rach showed, of Andrea being thrown out of that Tillerson thing, I thought Rach was being kinda funny, calling Andrea "a nice person".  In any case, she was making the point, Andrea was being professional & doing her job as a journalist -- and there was no mistaking her being thrown out of there, and not "escorted out".

What's vitally important here is that Rach showed what absolutely nobody else in media showed.  That Tillerson is dodging the press.  And now this has caught on. CNN, NYT, WaPo & others are now reporting this too.  Thanks, Rach, for catching this first.  If she had to use Andrea Mitchell (and call her a nice person) to expose Tillerson's dodging the press, so they can investigate any sinister reasons behind it?  Well, that's fine & dandy by me.

Man, Rach was so on fire Friday nite!  She had yet another "connecting the dots" moment -- and it's starting to catch on with rest of the press.  I luved how she showed there's no way Pence could not have known about Flynn being compromised & his Russia connections.  And so the WH story on why he's gone (because he lied to Pence) makes absolutely no sense.  See, now this is a gotcha moment.  Catching lying liars lying.  Way to go, Rach.  Wish you'd do the same to that lying poser bullshitter asshole Ryan too.

This is the thing I like most about Rach.  She doesn't make wild or baseless accusations or statements.  She backs up everything she says with facts.  All the stuff she was saying that's not making sense, of what's coming outta this administration?  Awesome!  And ALL based on facts & logical conclusions. Keep digging, Rach, keep digging.

[Medicine Crow]

I've been an Andrea-hater for a long time, but after seeing her shouting question-after-question to Tillerson convinced me that she's a serious reporter & is after the truth (despite leaning to the right).  In my opinion, she doesn't have to do that tough job because, for sure, she doesn't need the money & she's coming up 71 yrs., so she must be doing it for the love of it.  All that travelling must be hard, but she seems like a tough old bird that deserves respect.  Just sayin'.

[Calvada]

About Andrea asking Tillerson questions when clearly they have been instructed NOT to do so, it's humorous to hear the agonized "Andrea.  Please.  Andrea." out of the State staffers.  It's sort of a combination of embarrassment at what they have become and "please don't make me look bad in front of the new bosses."  However, I can't help but think for Andrea, in addition to wanting to be a good journalist, there's also an internal voice wondering, "Don't they know who I am??  I'm Andrea Mitchell for chrissakes!"

[ktwo]

MSNBC reran Rachel's show from last night tonight at 7 pm. Yay for more news and less prison!

[Evagirl]

On 3/11/2017 at 7:38 PM, ktwo said:

MSNBC reran Rachel's show from last night tonight at 7 pm. Yay for more news and less prison!

Ditto!

[Quilt Fairy]

I may have to stop watching Rachel because every time she connects a few more dots I sink into despair.  If anything good comes out of this or not, I hope she wins a bunch of awards for her reporting.

[chessiegal]

21 minutes ago, Quilt Fairy said:

I may have to stop watching Rachel because every time she connects a few more dots I sink into despair.  If anything good comes out of this or not, I hope she wins a bunch of awards for her reporting.

I hear you, but I'm so encouraged that someone is digging this up and reporting it. Important stuff. We look forward to her reporting every night. The things she's reporting need the light of day. As I said earlier, we were in our 20s when Watergate happened. Without the press, who knows?

[sistermagpie]

I like the way she seems to wind up with some good news about how protests are effective. I think she gets why that would be helpful.

[steelyis]

8 minutes ago, Quilt Fairy said:

I may have to stop watching Rachel because every time she connects a few more dots I sink into despair.  If anything good comes out of this or not, I hope she wins a bunch of awards for her reporting.

 

Rachel connecting U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's firing to Russian money laundering made me want to scream. After she reported Flynn's connection to the quid pro quo leak, I was seething!

I can't even wrap my head around the CBO report saying 15 million people will lose their medical insurance by next year. I want to hope the ACA survives, but Republicans are so goddamn nihilistic...

[ScoobieDoobs]

I luv that Rach didn't forget about today's Jared news.  Many other news outlets let it get lost in the sauce of Trump's bullshit wiretapping nonsense or the healthcare stuff.

Nope, Rach thankfuly knew the importance of this new Jared tidbit.  Alrighty, so that murky Chinese company, which likely has connections to the Chinese govt, just offered the Kushner family 400 mil for their building -- and sweetened the deal further by offering to let most of what they owe in loans go away.  But Rach didn't say that Jared did divest his stake in the building (supposedly).  Still, it looks awfully like the Chinese govt. trying to buy influence thru Jared's immediate family.

She really seems to relish delivering possible corruption news on Jared.  Or am I imagining this?  It looked to me as if she was ready to wave to Jared & say -- Pssst, Jared, you're not gonna like this segment.  Eh, maybe it's just me enjoying watching Rachel expose Jared for exactly who he is & what he's after.  Go after Ryan next, Rach!

I also luved Rach's kinda mysterious implication of Preet Bharara "buying himself an extra 24 hours" by forcing them to fire him, instead of willingly resigning.  I bet nobody else in media came up with this.  Yay, Rach!  I so hope you scared the shit outta Trump & his horribles, thinking about what Preet had time to gather up in that 24 hours till he had to clear out of his office.

Edited March 14, 2017 by ScoobieDoobs

[stormy]

Rachel's done a lot of hard digging on the Russian connection that she talked about last night.  I keep thinking that the Republicans are going to keep brushing it under the rug but journalists like her will become the new Woodward and Bernstein and it will all come to a head even if it takes a couple of years. 

[Evagirl]

I just wish Rachel got more mainstream coverage.  I wish her segments would be published the next day in WaPo or picked up by the AP.

She is really doing some good journalism.  None of the things she talks about is rumor.  Everything is documented.  If it's not documented she tells us it's not documented.  Why can't all journalist just report the facts and let us draw our own conclusions?

People will watch the garbage on Faux News, WKKK and crap will spread like wildfire.  I just don't understand it.

Edited March 14, 2017 by Evagirl
typo

[Tunia]

20 hours ago, ScoobieDoobs said:

<snip>

I also luved Rach's kinda mysterious implication of Preet Bharara "buying himself an extra 24 hours" by forcing them to fire him, instead of willingly resigning.  I bet nobody else in media came up with this.  Yay, Rach!  I so hope you scared the shit outta Trump & his horribles, thinking about what Preet had time to gather up in that 24 hours till he had to clear out of his office.

When Rachel queried "What do you think Preet Bharara was doing during those extra 24 1/2 hours?" all I could think of was "making copies...lots and lots of copies".

[nowandlater]

I hope it's true...I just hope it's not a letdown!

BTW: Rachel will be on Lawrence.

Edited March 14, 2017 by nowandlater

[biakbiak]

Rachel just tweeted that she has Trump's tax returns and they will be discussed tonight.

[jenrising]

[Tunia]

^^^Whoa!

[jenrising]

Someone's feeling their impending record ratings:

[nowandlater]

they're postponing the this is us finale on nbc for this... please, Rachel -- dont be rachel!!!

edited to add: holy fuck. we're 16 minutes in!!!

this could be her geraldo moment.

Spoiler

 

Edited March 15, 2017 by nowandlater

[jjj]

The Jonathan Chait tweet is perfect, about the meandering openings of Rachel's shows. 

Woo-hoo, tax returns!   

[slf]

5 minutes ago, nowandlater said:

they're postponing the this is us finale on nbc for this... please, Rachel -- dont be rachel!!!

 

That's funny but I do actually like how she leads into what she wants to discuss.

Though, admittedly, I've very impatient tonight. SHOW US, RACHEL.

[nowandlater]

5 minutes ago, jjj said:

The Jonathan Chait tweet is perfect, about the meandering openings of Rachel's shows. 

Woo-hoo, tax returns!   

20 minutes in and nothing!

her first segments are usually 21 minutes.

this is NOT the night to do the tease. not tonight, rachel!! not with everybody watching.

[ScoobieDoobs]

I had a feeling from that long lead-in, this might not necessarily be something earth-shattering.  It's interesting, but it isn't necessarily earth-shattering.  What's weird to me, is him admitting it's true.  WTF?  Still drip, drip, drip.  GAH!!

You know, Rach said last week, in one of her sign-off chats with LOD, that she was glad Trump never singled her out by name to insult (as LOD has pointed out many times Trump has done to him).  Will Trump now mention Rach?  Hmmmm.

I'm usually annoyed by her lead-ins, but I liked this one.  She was basically summing up what she's been talking about for the past few weeks & why it's so vitally important for EVERY American to see those damn tax returns.  It was kinda like Rach was answering back the vile Smellyanne when she oh-so-casually said nobody was interested in seeing his tax returns.  Really, Smellyanne?  Fuck, no!!!

Edited March 15, 2017 by ScoobieDoobs

[nowandlater]

So in the past few weeks, I've been watching Rachel but not really paying attention. I mean, the Russia stuff is interesting. But it just gets so repetitive night after night.

And then I realized why upthread why Kurt Eichenwald's scoops that Rachel helped promote didn't really go anywhere -- there's already a lot more scandalous stuff about Trump, and they haven't really made a dent.

Anyways, I'm highly disappointed in the show tonight. I think that it was a reputation-damaging ratings grab. All for a nothingburger.

Again, the long buildup was 20 minutes long. When she has a big revelation. She usually takes like 8 minutes for the buildup, not nearly half an hour.

Also, The Daily Beast scooped Rachel with its own report since they are connected to David Kay Johnson.

Conservatives are going to point to this as "fake news."

They could've just done their show. Not build up expectations beforehand. If there was news, it would've gone viral and Rachel would've attracted new viewers.

Instead, we got a whole lot of Geraldo-level disappointment.

Before this, I was going to go into a rant that Rachel's show hasn't been that interesting recently. Too much wonkiness. The Russian stuff gets repetitive. But then again, her ratings are soaring.

I think Fred Kaplan of Slate said it best:

[stormy]

Supposedly, Rachel is now winning her time slot against CNN and FOX.

Congrats Rachel!

[Calvada]

I flipped over to NBC - I think they were showing "This Is Us."  Did they start it late? I added time to my DVR recording, so appreciate the warning  I watch RM live and record TIU. 

TWO pages???  What is that - about 0.0008% of his return? I wonder if David Cay Johnston was blinking in Morse code "send me more pages, send me more pages."

I'm glad they brought up the security system in place at the IRS.  The Trump folks love to impugn the integrity and capabilities of federal employees.  I was glad to hear the acknowledgement that it would be just about impossible for this to be a leak from the IRS. 

[Dots And Stripes]

The White House's written response to Rachel's tax return report reminds me of those Scientology responses Leah Remini read every week. 

[nowandlater]

6 minutes ago, Calvada said:

I flipped over to NBC - I think they were showing "This Is Us."  Did they start it late? I added time to my DVR recording, so appreciate the warning  I watch RM live and record TIU. 

TWO pages???  What is that - about 0.0008% of his return? I wonder if David Cay Johnston was blinking in Morse code "send me more pages, send me more pages."

I'm glad they brought up the security system in place at the IRS.  The Trump folks love to impugn the integrity and capabilities of federal employees.  I was glad to hear the acknowledgement that it would be just about impossible for this to be a leak from the IRS. 

Okay, I was confused by this article. I thought it said they were showing it on NBC. I was wrong.

http://deadline.com/2017/03/this-is-us-season-finale-ratings-rachel-maddow-trump-impact-1202043484/

Frankly, I'm tired of David Cay Johnson. I mean, he's great. I remember him from the NY Times, I looked through his Trump book. I watched all his segments last year on Lawrence and Rachel. But it seems like he's beating a dead horse. I could imagine him having a smoking gun, yet proving to be ineffective at taking down Trump.

[jjj]

They brought Johnston over to "The Last Word," also, and over there, Johnston said that the full return was probably 500-1500 pages long.  Now, that would be news -- there just did not seem to be much to say about those two pages they talked about on Rachel's show. 

[Calvada]

I think it's funny how Johnston always refers to him as Donald, not Trump, not the president, but just Donald.  It's such a casual tone of disrespect. 

[ScoobieDoobs]

Anyone who doesn't call him a lunatic or an ass or refer to him as the orange clown, as I always do, is treating him OK.  Johnston has been covering him for so long, it's like he's someone he knows very well -- whether he does or not.

I hope this doesn't backfire on Rach.  She built this up as if it was something incredibly revealing -- and it just wasn't.  She came off like she was grabbing for ratings.  It has a kind of "boy who cried wolf" vibe.  It's kinda disappointing.  But it does go along with how this WH proceeds.  They reveal nothing unless forced to by the press.

Is it weird that Trump had this info at the ready to release himself?  Maybe or maybe not.  Could he have sent Johnston this info -- as Johnston suggested?  Was Rachel set up (and she merely took the bait) to make her look shitty, because of her thru-the-roof ratings lately?

Edited March 15, 2017 by ScoobieDoobs

[jjj]

Wait a minute.  This was the day the White House was supposed to show "proof" of the Obama wiretapping, or renege on that accusation.  And Rachel said last night that the wiretapping story was due to break.  That would have been one of the major stories -- even with the extension that was given for the "proof" early today.

How to get the media off this wiretapping crap?  Send out two nothingburger pages of a tax return from a year when Donald actually paid taxes.  Now three MSNBC shows in a row have talked about almost nothing else.  Rachel took the bait, and everyone is following her lead.  And the print media as well.  Plus, Donald gets to call Rachel "desperate for ratings" as a bonus. 

Yes? 

[maraleia]

What Rachel showed tonight was the only year he paid taxes since that almost billion dollar write down and I think the only reason why he paid taxes that year is it was the first year of his marriage to Melania. Remember there's evidence she didn't come to this county illegally and one way Orange Hitler would be able to cover for that is paying taxes the year he got married to her.

Also, that write down is suspect and I think it's tied to Russia connections that she's been reporting on for the past couple of weeks.

Jessica Halem- a really smart and funny lesbian I know tweeted this about Rachel today.

Lesbian processing on live national TV! "You see me!" #rachelmaddow #TrumpTaxes

"Let's make this quick" said no lesbian ever. #rachelmaddow

and queer woman TV recapper Dorothy Snarker posted this which is great

No matter what @maddow has in the tax returns, it's deeply satisfying to know Drumpf is angrily watching a gay woman on television right now.

Her reporting is what is going to bring him and his administration down. She's that focused.

[ScoobieDoobs]

If anything, those pages make him look pretty good.  Proves he did actually pay a decent amount in taxes & he probably isn't a "thousandaire", as he has been accused of.  BUT it also raises the question of -- if he released this so quickly & easily, why not release other years & more of the tax forms.  Eh, this is merely a quick distraction, but it could lead to much more trouble for Trump than Rachel.

Some quick advice, Rach.  Don't take the bait & start over-promoting something that's just a bunch of nothing.  The Fertilizer King stuff is important, but you're starting to sound repetitive about it, Rach.

[ahisma]

Quote

I'm usually annoyed by her lead-ins, but I liked this one.  She was basically summing up what she's been talking about for the past few weeks & why it's so vitally important for EVERY American to see those damn tax returns.

I agree. Her tweet that she had Trump's taxes exploded across the media—her ratings must have been through the roof. And she spent the whole A block summarizing the details that have been trickling out—Rybolovlev and the Palm Beach mansion, Rybolovlev's plane and yacht visits, Deutsche Bank, the Cyprus bank, Trump's campaign staff and Cabinet, the Azerbaijan deal, Preet Bharara's firing—with all the dot connecting she is so good at. 

With this many new viewers, you can bet there were plenty of them who had maybe heard of one or two of these things but hadn't realized just how piled high the signs of corruption are or what the connections are. I think this was more important to get out to a wider public, so they can use to hold their representatives and senators to account. 

The tax document itself was primarily important to show what kind of percentage rich people pay, in theory, compared to middle class and poor people, what percentage Trump paid in actuality, and how Trump wants to get rid of the alternative minimum altogether to pay even less. Not worth a full hour on its own merits, but a good excuse for the A block, and a powerful argument for fairness for middle America. 

Quote

I'm glad they brought up the security system in place at the IRS.  The Trump folks love to impugn the integrity and capabilities of federal employees.  I was glad to hear the acknowledgement that it would be just about impossible for this to be a leak from the IRS. 

Agreed!

I don't think the conservatives can cry "fake news" on this, since the WH confirmed the same facts. (Another reason why to think this could have come from DT, since he's usually the first one to cry "fake!" But I think if there had been anything today on the wiretapping story, it would have still gotten mentioned.)

Edited March 15, 2017 by ahisma
Typo fix

[rallymantis]

Best. Episode. EVER!!

Can't wait to catch your new show on Fox, Rache.

[Sesquipedalia]

All the accusations (mostly seen on Twitter) that tax returns are a "distraction" seem silly to me. How Kellyanne Conway sits on a sofa is a distraction. We've been clamoring for the tax returns for forever, so even two pages are a big deal. Of course Rachel had to milk it, but more importantly, she used her time to inform her (presumably large) audience about all the reasons the taxes are so important and why we need to see all of them. The wire tapping thing seems like a much bigger "distraction," following the usual pattern: Trump tweets some stupid lies and then everyone freaks out for a week trying to investigate something that he just pulled out of his ass (also known as Breitbart).

[EmZeeGee]

1 hour ago, Sesquipedalia said:

 

All the accusations (mostly seen on Twitter) that tax returns are a "distraction" seem silly to me. How Kellyanne Conway sits on a sofa is a distraction. We've been clamoring for the tax returns for forever, so even two pages are a big deal.

 

Agreed. It's strikes me as strange that every time a new bad detail comes out regarding Trump people's first instinct is to label it a distraction from another bad detail about Trump. He's not playing 3-D chess, he's just an unsavory dude. Rachel sent out two tweets , one stating exactly what she had, and everyone took it and ran  as if she was going to finally reveal how to use the three seashells in Demolition Man.  She didn't hype it up, viewers and pundits did and then raced to call her Geraldo at the vault afterwards. It was certainly a big enough deal for the White House and every other news outlet to attempt to scoop her by providing details before her show aired. A burglary at the Watergate complex wasn't a big deal until it was a big deal after all.

[nowandlater]

1 hour ago, EmZeeGee said:

Agreed. It's strikes me as strange that every time a new bad detail comes out regarding Trump people's first instinct is to label it a distraction from another bad detail about Trump. He's not playing 3-D chess, he's just an unsavory dude. Rachel sent out two tweets , one stating exactly what she had, and everyone took it and ran  as if she was going to finally reveal how to use the three seashells in Demolition Man.  She didn't hype it up, viewers and pundits did and then raced to call her Geraldo at the vault afterwards. It was certainly a big enough deal for the White House and every other news outlet to attempt to scoop her by providing details before her show aired. A burglary at the Watergate complex wasn't a big deal until it was a big deal after all.

She/her people knew exactly what she was doing with this tweet, which is exactly why it got all those retweets and likes and pushed Maddow's name to the top of Twitter's worldwide trending topics.

The initial tweet overhyped it.

What we've been waiting for is Trump's recent tax returns, which this tweet implied...

The follow-up tweet, coming 48 minutes later, toned down expectations by saying it was from 2005. But if they were going to be 2005, then there had to be a smoking gun or something really interesting.

I follow more than 900 people on Twitter, the vast majority of them aren't into politics. All of a sudden everybody on my feed was like, "how do I watch MSNBC?"

She also overhyped it by waiting nearly half an hour to get to the point. The more she dragged it out, the more she was saying "I've got nothing." She would never, never ever do this on another episode.

It was a pure, sad ratings grab. And it only served to help Trump. (Breaking news: He paid $38 million in taxes! Yes, there's all this complex stuff about lowering his tax bill, but that's not going to be the headline.) All the Russian stuff has been talked about for months. People just want to see something concrete. This wasn't it.

As for those saying that they were glad Trump was watching Rachel, I'm pretty sure I've heard the president say nice things about her in the past (probably to Katy Tur).

We already know that Steve Bannon is a massive TRMS fan.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-08-23/trump-s-debt-to-brilliant-rachel-maddow

 

Edited to add:

The TV critic at (the very liberal) Slate is dead on:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/03/15/rachel_maddow_s_trump_taxes_scoop_was_a_cynical_self_defeating_spectacle.html

 

Quote

The longer Maddow went on, ever deeper into a conspiratorial thicket, the clearer it became that whatever tax returns Maddow had, they weren’t as juicy as the ones she was talking about. If she had anything that damning, she would have shared them from the start. TV is a ratings game, but an entire episode about highly damaging tax returns is just as likely to get you great ratings as milking the possibility that you have highly damaging tax returns, and less likely to get you compared to Geraldo. Maddow even went so far as to hold the tax returns back until after the first commercial break, as if we were watching an episode of The Bachelor and not a matter of national importance—because we weren’t, in fact, watching a matter of national importance, just a cable news show trying to set a ratings record.

AND:

Quote

Trump’s tax returns, whatever information they happen to contain, constitute a major scoop. Maddow’s social media team ensured the highest possible ratings for that scoop. But if ever a story should have been delivered in a stentorian, fuddy-duddy, nonpartisan manner, this was it. In positioning it as a grand revelation, a vital step in comprehending Trump’s corruption, MSNBC created an exceedingly cynical spectacle. By playing into the network’s loyal liberal audience’s fantasy that there exists a Trump silver bullet, it instead delivered Trump a positive news cycle— the guy pays taxes! Who knew!— amidst the debacle of the AHCA, along with more evidence that the media is aligned against him. The lesson? Don’t tell us you have news, just tell us the news.

Edited March 15, 2017 by nowandlater

[EmZeeGee]

12 minutes ago, nowandlater said:

The follow-up tweet, coming 48 minutes later, toned down expectations by saying it was from 2005. But if they were going to be 2005, then there had to be a smoking gun or something really interesting.

It's worth mentioning that not only does she mention it was from 2005, but that she only had the 1040 Form. Those materials were then available far before she made the revelation. If one wanted to see them while she was providing context-- and my God why do people hate contextualization-- one could do that on multiple sites.

All I keep hearing is: "Why does anyone care about a burglary at the Watergate?" The election already proved there's no smoking gun. For some reason that defies my understanding, folks believed Rachel possessed one. Anyone that believed she had every schedule and attachment was incredibly naive. 

31 minutes ago, nowandlater said:

And it only served to help Trump

Trump immediately became defensive and we learned how quickly he can release detailed tax information. Not any help to him. He's crafting tax policy while his finances remain opaque. The more we know, the better. Whatever sliver it might be. This is Ermattungskrieg.

[stormy]

Rachel got some attention on Morning Joe this morning.

Unfortunately, Mark Halperin thinks this two page of nothingness made trump look good.  But the other MJ panelists debunked that and called bullshit.

Edited March 15, 2017 by stormy

[General Days]

What I appreciated about the segment is that one of the first things David Cay Johnston said to Rachel, was that Trump could have been behind the leak. I think that's the real story in last night's episode. It's quite likely Trump had his people leak these two pages to distract from the Russia story, KAC's espionage microwaves manipulation angle, and Russia Russia Russia. This morning, on Morning Joe, more than one commentator latched onto that theory. I hope they keep it going. 

[nowandlater]

3 hours ago, EmZeeGee said:

It's worth mentioning that not only does she mention it was from 2005, but that she only had the 1040 Form. Those materials were then available far before she made the revelation. If one wanted to see them while she was providing context-- and my God why do people hate contextualization-- one could do that on multiple sites.

All I keep hearing is: "Why does anyone care about a burglary at the Watergate?" The election already proved there's no smoking gun. For some reason that defies my understanding, folks believed Rachel possessed one. Anyone that believed she had every schedule and attachment was incredibly naive. 

Trump immediately became defensive and we learned how quickly he can release detailed tax information. Not any help to him. He's crafting tax policy while his finances remain opaque. The more we know, the better. Whatever sliver it might be. This is Ermattungskrieg.

 

Maddow led everybody to believe that she had something found something earth-shattering in the documents. If something so earth-shattering was readily available on the web, then people wouldn't have been waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Again, she built up massive interest with the vague tweet that she got the tax returns 90 minutes before the show. The 2005 part didn't come until 30 minutes before the show, while Rache was trending.

It's like that The Wire quote, "you come at the king, you best not miss."

She missed, and hurt her credibility, becoming The Boy who Cried Wolf.

I enjoy Rachel and Lawrence. Right-wingers always say they are MSNBC's equivalent of O'Reilly and Hannity. And I've always been, "no way."

But last night, I realized that it is true in a sense.

As has been documented on this board, Rachel has become in the habit in recent months of saying she has an "exclusive," or big news. And then we get something that's disappointing, or something that nobody really cares about the next day.

Instead of being honest with us, her loyal listeners who aren't going to change the channel, she overhypes.

Last night, she gave ammunition to the right.

As for Trump, he always acts defensive. He's always been shady with his finances and taxes. Really, nothing has changed on his end.

Edited March 15, 2017 by nowandlater

[Evagirl]

10 hours ago, ScoobieDoobs said:

I hope this doesn't backfire on Rach.  She built this up as if it was something incredibly revealing -- and it just wasn't.  She came off like she was grabbing for ratings.  It has a kind of "boy who cried wolf" vibe.  It's kinda disappointing.

I was very disappointed.  The show implied it was a full return.  It was a ratings grabber and I didn't like it one bit.  It was Trump who leaked those 2 pages because they showed nothing but that he paid $38M in taxes and that's what the WH is crowing about today.  She got played plain and simple.  She should have announced, "We have a portion of Trump's 2005 return," or something along that line.  But to have people think she had some really breaking news regarding his taxes was unfair to the viewers.  I hope her beating Faux News in her time slot isn't going to her head.  She's been doing some excellent reporting here lately.

[Frost]

I hope getting a wider audience for Rachel's 20 minute 'suspicious things' summary at the beginning of the show was her real objective.  Even as a regular viewer, I thought is was worthwhile.  Unfortunately, the hype over two pages of pretty much nothing is overshadowing any good of having a wider group of people hear that summary.  As soon as I heard the tax guru suggest Donald may have leaked the two pages himself I started nodding my head.  True, the net income on the form doesn't support the idea of Donald as a multi-billionaire but it does seem to prove he pays taxes - even if a relatively low rate.  You need to see the year before and after to see how that $36M stacks up.  And you really need to see the details behind it.

What could have been a juicy tidbit was hyped beyond all reason.  I had only planned to watch Chris Heyes last night but the MSNBC count down clock to TRMS made me skip going to the grocery store to watch, what I later told my sister, a whole lot of not much.

[General Days]

I only half-assed watched last night, because I was working on something (and didn't honestly expect she had a substantial amount of tax documents, because if that kind of motherlode was in MSNBC's hands, they would have preempted her regular show, and they would have had Rachel with Brian Williams and maybe Chris Hayes break the story in a more newsy presentation).

But (sorry, I didn't mean to be Maddow-y with a long lead-in), this morning on Morning Joe, someone said the copy Maddow had on her show bore the words, "Client Copy." Did she or Johnston mention that? If so, I didn't notice. Did anyone see that? If it's true, it should be reiterated. Spicer should be asked about it at press conferences, etc. 

[clb1016]

19 minutes ago, General Days said:

But (sorry, I didn't mean to be Maddow-y with a long lead-in), this morning on Morning Joe, someone said the copy Maddow had on her show bore the words, "Client Copy." Did she or Johnston mention that? If so, I didn't notice. Did anyone see that? If it's true, it should be reiterated. Spicer should be asked about it at press conferences, etc. 

It's stamped on page 2 by the filer's signature line.