Trump's taxes: Today's news for the "Ides of March"

Today is the 1973rd anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar. Caesar's assassination proved that killing one dictator to replace him with another one sometimes works out well (after a rather bumpy transition), as the reign of Emperor Augustus proved to be one of the most prosperous in Ancient Rome.

In news of today's emperor...

New York Times:

Trump Wrote Off $100 Million in Losses in 2005, Leaked Forms Show

President Trump wrote off more than $100 million in business losses to reduce his federal taxes in 2005, according to forms made public on Tuesday night: a rare glimpse at documents that he had refused to disclose since becoming a candidate for the nation’s highest office.

Mr. Trump paid $38 million in federal income taxes on reported income of $150 million, an effective tax rate of 25 percent, according to forms disclosed on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show. By claiming losses, Mr. Trump apparently saved millions of dollars in taxes that he would otherwise have owed.

Notice the slant there? "President Trump wrote off more than $100 million in business losses to reduce his federal taxes in 2005", as if he should not be allowed to write off losses, even though everyone writes off losses.

We will just whistle past the $38 million paid, or the 25% tax rate BEFORE that $103 million loss was written off.

However, the New York Times does make one valid point:

Nothing in the two pages produced on Tuesday night suggested any ties with Russia. Nor did they provide much information about his businesses that was not previously known. 

Unfortunately, the Democrats were quick to deny this and keep their worldview intact:

“If they can release some of the information, they can release all of the information,” Zac Petkanas, a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “The only reason not to release his returns is to hide what’s in them, such as financial connections with Russian oligarchs and the Kremlin.”

This completely ignores the fact that doing business with Russians is not illegal, nor does it prove anything illicit.

Sadly, the media on the Right was also quick to jump into this, as Drudge Report linked to the following two stories:

Washington Times:

Obamas paid effective tax rate of 18.7 percent in 2015

And...

The Gateway Pundit:

Oops! MSNBC Reveals Trump Paid 25% Tax Rate – 

Socialist Bernie Sanders Paid 13% Tax Rate

All of this proves exactly zilch. Neither Sanders nor Obama earned as much as Trump. In addition, all three of the taxes were reported in three different years: Trump was in 2005, Obama was in 2015, and Sanders was in 2014. Apples to oranges to potatoes.

But here is the best part of this story:

MRCTV:

Twitter Just SHREDDED Rachel Maddow Over Trump Tax Return 'Story'

MSNBC's unapologetic liberal “journalist” Rachel Maddow lit the internet on fire Tuesday night when she teased via Twitter that she’d gotten her hands on President Donald Trump’s tax returns – a scoop that would have been pretty juicy, considering Trump never released his tax returns during the presidential campaign as all other modern-era presidents have done.

BREAKING: We've got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC.

(Seriously).

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) March 14, 2017

If only it'd been true.

What Maddow and the fine folks over at MSNBC actually managed to do was get part of a copy of Trump’s 2005 tax return. Which was already 12 years old. And which the White House had already released.

And which the Wall Street Journal had already reported on – a year ago.

Rachel gets a bear for this one: