[Pittman] MSNBC ‘All Wet’ Moment With Trump Tax Return Leaves The Donald ‘High & Dry’

MSNBC really pushed for viewership for about a half-hour tonight, even getting the likes of me to tune in. Host Rachel Maddow held the audience hostage as long as possible holding back on releasing the 2 pages of 1040 tax forms from Donald Trump in 2005. What sort of blockbuster news was she about to release that would surely be the end of 'The Donald'? Something had to be new. Surely she is not saying that the 'breaking news' was the same thing the Wall Street Journal reported in 2016.

But upon Maddow's dragged out, slow to get to the red meat show, aside from first ever visible images of the 2 pages of Trump's 1040 Tax Form... like everyone else, I'm scratching my head at where they could possibly see any "Aha" moment as they tirelessly seek to harm the president's reputation. The "Big News", is that Donald J Trump paid nearly $38 million dollars just in Federal Income taxes that year. It comes to roughly $104,000 per day and rests at 25.3% of his $150M income.

And......And?  Everyone was waiting for the point of all of this because quite frankly, Maddow has destroyed the idea that the president wasn't paying his fair share of taxes. In fact his opponent in the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton supposed that Trump evaded paying any taxes and was harming the nation.

"And yet he goes around talking about 'make America great.' You know, that means paying for our military. That means paying for our roads. That means paying for the V.A. That means a lot of things. And if you've got someone running for president who's afraid to release his tax returns because it will expose the fact that he pays no federal income tax, I think that's a big problem," Hillary Rodham Clinton May 16, 2016.

Okay, so what did Donald Trump pay for in just his 2005 Federal Income taxes alone?

• A family of four on welfare is provided with roughly $600 per month which amounts to $7200 yearly for food alone. Trump fed 5,250 families in 2005
• Or he paid the salaries of 585 military surgeons, each who made roughly $65,000 in yearly salary and who were saving tens of thousands of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan that year.
• A Fireman in 2005 was making an average $44,200 and the federal government gives out grants each year to pay for the salaries for additional firemen. Donald Trump kept 860 in the nation's firehouses.
• At $120,000 per mile for a two-lane paved road, Trump paid for 317 miles that year, which would pave from Boston, MA to Philadelphia, PA.

Did Rachel Maddow just give President Trump the biggest victory in his first 53 days in office?

Even their sister station at CNBC seems to think so, publishing this earlier tonight after the Rachel Maddow Show aired the 1040 tax form:

Op-Ed: Donald Trump just got a nice victory, thanks, of all people, to Rachel Maddow (Link)

Ken Pittman is a talk show host on 1420 WBSM New Bedford. He can be heard Saturdays from 9am-Noon. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.