**Written by Doug Powers

This is a progressive classic: MSNBC’s lead Resistor™ who breathlessly hyped the backfired Trump scoop blames viewers for expecting too much:

Rachel Maddow says that if people felt let down by her story about President Donald Trump’s 2005 tax document it’s more because of the weight of expectation than anything she did.

The MSNBC host found herself in the odd position Wednesday of defending herself from criticism following one of the biggest-ever scoops for her show. Maddow’s show revealed, through reporter David Cay Johnston, two pages of tax return information that showed Trump earned $150 million in 2005 and paid $38 million in income taxes that year. Trump has steadfastly refused to release his tax returns.
[…]
“Because I have information about the president doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a scandal,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that it’s damning information. If other people leapt to that conclusion without me indicating that it was, that hype is external to what we did.”

Gosh, why would her viewers have been expecting something helpful to the liberal narrative?

If you missed Maddow’s segment on Trump’s tax forms, it went like this:

But there was a temporary upside to the bait & switch for MSNBC, because the hype paid off:

More than four million people watched Rachel Maddow unveil Donald Trump’s tax figures from 2005.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the audience for the MSNBC was 60 percent larger than it usually is when Maddow revealed two pages from a decade-old federal tax return at 9 p.m. on Tuesday night. She had a 1.2 rating in the key news demo of adults 25-54.

There’s no data though concerning how many of those people were liberals who later angrily turned off the TV and sought comfort in the arms of Keith Olbermann’s podcast.

**Written by Doug Powers

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