Donald Trump flat lied about releasing his tax returns. He will never do it. And, going forward, no candidate will ever do so again.
Simply because there’s no penalty for not releasing your tax returns. The media will not report on it. They will not speculate. The talking-heads will not engage in hours and hours of speculation about optics and shadow-clouds.
Hillary Clinton sent and received email as part of her job at Secretary of State. I’m old enough to remember when we were supposed to believe those emails contained evidence that she was using her position at State to enrich herself through the Clinton Foundation. And before that it was going to contain the Benghazi “stand down” order the Republicans fantasized.
Yesterday’s breaking news (that Directory Comey simply couldn’t wait to tell Congress about) is that her aide may have sent (non-classified) emails to herself to make it easier to print them out.
But Donald Trump has not released his tax returns. We don’t know anything about his finances. We don’t know who he owes money to. We don’t know from where he derives his income. And for some reason, none of the people who should desperately care about this story seem to care.
I am every day stunned by the stark contrast between Clinton, who has had every inch of her personal and professional life pored over by muckrakers without finding a single thing, and Trump, whose history is so ripe and pungent that even the lightest scratch reveals corruption and rot. One, a universally respected stateswoman with a lifetime of public service, the other a universally reviled failed businessman who flat lies about his charitable giving (and uses his foundation to bribe public officials).
This is the person we’re going to let off the hook? Of course, we can trust that Donald Trump’s tax returns are totally clean. That there’s nothing there. And of course, we can trust that Donald Trump will release them when he’s done with his audit. Because he said so.
