Not lies, per se, but this shows how nefariously the media can pursue and twist a story to make one look bad. There was nothing there, but they tried incessantly to make it appear there was for the sole purpose of doing damage.
Over and Over Again: Using Stolen Tax Records to Impugn Trump (and the rest of the media trumpets their agenda)
■ In October 2016 the Times rolled out a story on Trump’s tax returns, they may have been obtained and published illegally. This came just weeks after the top editor at the paper, Dean Baquet, said he would risk jail time to obtain them. At that time NBC’s Kate Snow dutifully reported: “Good evening. It happened on the first day of October, what may well be the kind of October surprise that shakes up this presidential race. While Donald Trump has refused to make his tax returns public, citing an ongoing audit by the IRS, someone mailed The New York Times several pages of Trump’s 1995 tax records. Those documents revealed the candidate reported a massive loss and suggest, according to experts, he may legally have not paid any income tax for years. Democrats jumped on the news and the Trump campaign went on defense today.”
■ In October 2018 NBC’s Kristen Welker relayed an “explosive report by The New York Times”: “The Times obtained tens of thousands of pages of financial records, documents NBC News has not had the opportunity to independently review. It found that Mr. Trump and his father built their fortune by engaging in a, quote, ‘pattern of deception and obfuscation,’ saying, ‘Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents.’”
■ In May 2019, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt highlighted another Times tax bombshell: “And President Trump is also firing back this evening after the New York Times claimed to have gotten a hold of his secret tax information showing he lost more than a billion dollars in the 1980s and ’90s. With more on that we turn to NBC’s Hallie Jackson. Correspondent Hallie Jackson: “The Times reporting in his core businesses largely casinos, hotels and retail space he lost more than a billion dollars between 1985 and 1994, saying, ‘year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer.’ The paper adds he didn’t pay income taxes for eight of those ten years.”
■ In September 2020, ABC’s Tom Llamas hyped: “We begin tonight with breaking news, that bombshell headline late today. The New York Times obtaining information on President Trump’s tax returns. The Times reporting the President paid just $750 in taxes in 2016 and again in his first year in office. In 10 out of the 15 years before that, he reportedly paid no taxes at all because he reported losing more money than he made.”
Fox News’ Howard Kurtz pointed out why this Trump tax story always fizzled-out for the paper: “Even the Times doesn’t claim that Trump broke any laws. He took advantage of a labyrinth of legal deductions that are available to people who traffic in real estate and investments...that’s the system approved by Congress. Who wants to pay more taxes than they have to? Amazon paid no federal income taxes for three years, and it’s got plenty of company.”
