Right side of the law =/= right side of ethical behavior.

Also, what many of us suspect is that his tax returns will show that he sucks at business, that he has less money than he pretends, and that most of the money he does have comes from being a celebrity rather than an expert dealmaker. There's nothing illegal in that, but it would further expose the con job he ran on the American people.

Furthermore, having lawyers and accountants doesn't necessitate legal behavior. Mobsters have lawyers and accountants. And in fact, Trump's lawyer in the 70s and 80s, Ray Cohn, was a mob lawyer and a crook in his own right.

I hope this doesn't' come off as trolling because I'm really trying to gain some insight. With that stated.

So you are expecting to they will uncover unethical behavior. Unethical in what sense because people certainly have different views in what is and isn't ethical.

As far as the extent of his wealth that seems to me to be a rabbit hole that isn't worth going down. Whether it is $9 billion, $4 billion, $1 billion, etc. I am almost certain that the valuation put on his real estate holdings is where you'll find differences of opinion. There are all kinds of accounting rules for valuing assets on the balance sheet. IIRC his company is not publicly traded and I don't think he has any plans to make it public so GAAP accounting isn't that big of a deal for him. As far as his prowess as a businessman that seems like a pretty minor issue to me, not one that will weigh in voters decisions much in 2020.

These.
I didn't watch the show, but I'm engaged in general. For those who didn't watch the show and aren't engaged, the new story is
Trump + Taxes = nothing there

Instead of putting what she actually had:
Trump paid 25%. BUT without the AMT (which republicans have been trying to kill forever) he would have paid 4%

Without further leaks or detailed returns, Maddow has single-handedly killed the tax story for most unengaged Americans.

This was a Chris Darden "If the gloves don't fit" level fail for the left.

So you are thinking that the IRS might have missed something? Or perhaps not reporting all of his income?

Also you don't have to completely sit on it to just run the story in a much better way then they did. They could have just issued a statement saying

"Today MSNBC received an anonymous email containing incomplete tax information of Donald Trump. While we believe the information to be credible, it pertains to a period of time long before Mr. Trump became a public political figure. Given the source, publishing the document falls below the standard of journalistic integrity we have set here at MSNBC.

We do not condone the potential illegal leaking of personal tax information but will continue to urge President Trump to willingly release his full tax returns from years that are pertinent to his Presidential run. As someone with nothing to hide, he should have no problem doing so."

They have no obligation to do anything further that.

She walked it back literally an hour later, mentioning they had the 2005 1040. We truly live in the instant, on-demand society. As far as presentation, the first 20 min A-block was literally bog standard Maddow show. I mean if she had full copies of all returns and schedules from 2005-2015, then she probably would have altered the show, but she prob had 2x standard audience tonight and is all about setting up context, sometimes more goddam context than is necessary or strictly relevant (which is why I prefer Chis Hayes for the most part, though Maddow is solid, especially with DVR).

Think she handled it fine, other than being duped by Stephen Miller's one good idea this quarter. Also, wouldn't be surprised if the little nick she scored keeps getting chipped away at.

Unethical could be further taking advantage of tax arcana in dubious ways to pay nothing. It could be making a lot of money off of snake oil. It could be Trump businesses profiting from his executive orders. It could be many things; I'm hardly the person to ask since I know ~0 about finance. But having transparency would certainly clear up whether he's behaving unethically or not.

Are you kidding me, bruh? His business prowess is the #1 reason cited by Trump voters in every "Hillbilly Elegy" NPR piece, and there have been hundreds of those. Granted, "business prowess" serves some Trump voters as an alibi for their true motives, which have more to do with "Western civilization" (i.e. racism) than the economy. But still, exposing Trump's Expert Businessman façade as a fraud would keep those well-meaning but clueless voters, who think The Art of the Deal will propel us into utopia, home on Election Day.

This is all good and fair and I agree with a lot of it, that his business competence and prowess is overstated and exaggerated and would be undermined by his returns, that some part of his self-promotion about his great business acumen bought him some credibility among half-wits but what he really channeled was just "Western Civilization" type concerns, and I think it's genuinely scandalous Trump hasn't released his tax returns. Co-signed.

But: now that hes a buffoon President, we can probably focus less on tearing down the Expert Businessman facade and instead destroy his credibility on being an Expert President.

Everyone should again spend today and the rest of the week talking about how Trump, Ryan and the GOP are planning to rollback the ACA and replace it with a handout for rich people.

Yeah, so what if people think he's a genius businessperson and that successful businesspeople are omnipotent and omniscient. That's a value that the derposphere spent decades indoctrinating. You don't change people's values within any reasonable period of time.

But his money was supposed to make him put America first. He's beholden to nobody, etc. He's gonna do the best job for America because it's a new challenge and he's not going to entangle it with his business interests or cronyism.

Attack that, with what he's actually doing. Forget his business prowess. Forget conspiracies.

Maddow a strong pick for Troll of the Week.

Tax returns provide leads to be investigated.
Plus how little he made. (examine how rich he would be if his inheritance simply went into the stock market or treasuries)
How the tax laws get abused.
Plus his bankruptcy history and bank deals.

As someone who spent years studying "Western Civilization," I've gone from sorta knowing what these rubes were talking about to not really getting it at all. I mean is it Epicurus, Democritus, Socrates, Roman law and poetry, Greek plays? Na, if anything, it's Aristotle infused with Christianity as represented in scholasticism, basically Aquinas, Anselm, a dash of St. Augustine. The highpoint of a decadent regime that was overtaken 400-500 years ago.

If Descartes is labeled "The Father of Modern Philosophy," it's because they ignore him and everything after, including Newton, etc. as too Modern for their worldview. If anything, the Enlightenment and after, along with the de-Christianized version of the Greeks and Romans is "Western Civilization," not scholasticism with a dash of colonialist racism thrown in. And, really, it's mainly Protestants nut-hugging the apex of Catholic thought as their "cultural" touchstone. This stuff is too stupid for words.

It's also funny because even "sophisticated" rightist journals like the Claremont Review publish stuff that would barely make it into Salon if it came from the "left," much less publications like the NY or London Review of Books. The National Review is Breitbart with the occasional, if rare, four syllable word. Sure, these guys really care about "Western Civilization," but there's hardly an informed humanities scholar or philosopher among them. The best they can do is Strauss, who is a delusional hack with different types of racists adopting polarized interpretations.

I actually believe, to some extent, in something called Western Culture: access to knowledge based on thought, reason, experimentation, free inquiry, not prejudice or authority, and tolerance, the rule of law, broadly, the Enlightenment. Thing is, people from other cultures often seem to dig such "western culture" when exposed to it, at least the sharp ones, and can join it and advance it, from Gandhi to MLK, which is more than ok, because it's universal in form and ideal, from scientific knowledge to the universal declaration of human rights.

The "Western Culture" peddled by the Bannon-Miller's and their influences is just resentment and confusion dressed up with a few half-understood references to a certain strain of pop-history and popular religion.

What kind of billionaire resorts to branding and marketing a fraud college, steaks, and a bunch of other crap?

No, they cannot. A reporter can report informatoin given to them so long as they weren't part of the illegal activity used to obtain it.

Lindsay Graham, "I'm going to work with dems to pass a law that anyone running for president has to release their tax returns." Lindsay has been an impressive Trump troll going on a year. He's like bizarro Jeff Sessions.l

Lol maybe watch the story since his tax rate and it's implications for his policy were the discussed at length.

The logic on this itt is really disappointing and shows there is less of a gap between the right and left sometimes than I like to believe.

No journalist on earth would not report what she got, she has no control on what is leaked to her and not reporting it would be journalistic malpractice.

At most she is guilty of promoting her show with a tweet for ****s sake which is the absolute baseline minimum promotion for anything.

Did here first tweet oversell, sure. Other than that she did nothing wrong and if you think otherwise you relally need to examine your views and see them for what they are are; purely partisan and no different then the worst of the deplorables.

Ask yourself, if there was something damming in the returns would you all be complaining about her tweet?

You are made there was nothing bad. Period.

I don't disagree (see my spiel about calling it Trumpcare). However, I still think tax returns have value from the above POV. It will be easier to turn Trump's base if they feel he lied to them from the start.

Like I'm envisioning his most ardent supporters reassuring on-the-fence types in 2020 that his policies will work but just need more time. The will to give him more time would evaporate if it were revealed that he ran his companies terribly for decades.

He can be stupid and a billionaire

Nah, we're mad at how easy it is to manipulate the media and con the electorate

We're mad at the shape of the narrative

This is a lot of words to say that, yes, you have to be ignorant if you think being Muslim can't happen if you don't want to destroy white people and their culture

The last 4 months or so here have been very eye opening to me.

This isnt 4chan or /theDonald. We are suppose to be the side that deals in facts and reality.

There is zero evidence that trumps camp leaked the returns. Zero. It's possible sure. However, right now so many people have accepted it as fact based on nothing. Zero. Soley because they were not negative.

Please explain the difference between this and pizzagate?

Come on guys. Let's do better. We are the side of reason, logic and evidence-based debate.

There actually is legitimate grounds to believe Trump leaked the returns. It's been posted several times itt.

There is pure speculation. No evidence.