**Written by Doug Powers

With a tweet Tuesday evening, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow got the lefty media & Dem flacks salivating so much you’d have thought they all just got another invitation to dinner at John Podesta’s:

And then, depression set in:

One of the most closely guarded secrets in politics — Donald Trump’s income taxes — became a little bit less mysterious late Tuesday as prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston and MSNBC published a partial copy of the president’s 2005 federal filing. The two-page disclosure shed little light on the entrepreneur’s complex financial dealings, showing he paid about $38 million on income of roughly $150 million, an effective tax rate of 25 percent.

The publication of the unsigned documents marked “client only”, which drew howls of outrage from the White House, did not include the most important financial data that might be collected from Trump’s full returns, including the sources of his income, his partners, to whom he paid interest, and other relationships that might feed concerns that he faces unprecedented conflicts of interest.

Heck, Bernie Sanders paid a lower percentage of his income in taxes, and he’s a friggin’ socialist.

Maddow and MSNBC’s big scoop has been compared to Geraldo Rivera’s “Capone’s Vault” event, except that’s not really fair to Geraldo because nobody emerged from the vault, gave him a giant wedgie and then ran away laughing.

The “nothingburger” mocked ’round the world:

A much shorter version of that entire segment is here.

The “Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist” who received Trump’s 2005 return in the mail speculated it might have been somebody from the White House who sent it to him:

“By the way, let me point out it’s entirely possible that Donald sent this to me,” David Cay Johnston said on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

“Donald Trump has over the years leaked all sorts of things,” he added. “Donald has a long history of leaking material about himself when he thinks it’s in his interest.”

“It’s a possibility, and it could have been leaked by someone at his direction. With Donald, you know, you never know. Yes, I think I have to include that in the list of possibilities of where it came from.” Johnston said Trump “creates his own reality.”

“He says things that aren’t true, he says things and then denies he said them, he lives in this world that isn’t the world where you and I live of verifiable facts,” he said.

These clowns got absolutely embarrassed by reality and they’re still pointing the “fake news” finger elsewhere?

I’ll close with one of Trump’s biggest archenemies showing what a difference just a couple hours can make:

If those two tweets could talk:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe