We interrupt our regularly scheduled health coverage to bring you this newsflash from the ongoing war on President Trump. In what’s being described as nothing less than an “epic fail” by Rachel Maddow at MSNBC, an aggressively hyped “scoop” that Maddow promised would astonish viewers turned out to be an embarrassing backfire.

It is a felony crime, by the way, to release another person’s federal tax returns without permission. The lawlessness of the act did not seem to dissuade anti-Trump activists (formerly known as “journalists”) from releasing it, however.

Far from embarrassing the President, Donald Trump’s 2005 tax return — now widely circulated across the ‘net — shows he paid $38 million in taxes on $150 million in earnings, instantly shattering the fake news narrative of the entire mainstream media which has consistently claimed “Trump paid no taxes.” (See linked sources below.)

Following the astonishing backfire of the supposed bombshell news, MSNBC was widely mocked as the new “Comedy Central,” and many internet observers wondered if the left-wing media would soon revert to its wholly-discredited Russian conspiracy theory narrative as a backup plan. As one reader commented, “Trump is always one step ahead of these @sshats. He made them look like idiots again.”

(Prediction: Left-wing “journalists” will now Photoshop the tax return to mock it up with fake numbers and release a whole new “fake news” tax return that they will claim is real…)

Rachel Maddow accidentally demonstrates how MSNBC is fake news

To the delight of all those who tire of the establishment media’s fake news assaults on the American psyche, the release of Trump’s 2005 tax return satisfyingly disproves the liberal media’s narrative that falsely claimed Trump paid no taxes whatsoever. Now, we know that narrative holds no more water than the “Russians hacked the election” fiction also being peddled by the same delusional news cartels such as the Washington Post and NYT.

“MSNBC host Rachel Maddow was widely mocked on social media Tuesday night after drawing out the revelations in what she announced as an “exclusive story” regarding Donald Trump’s tax returns,” reported Breitbart.com:

Instead of getting right to her big scoop about a 2005 Trump tax return she obtained, Maddow opened her show with a rambling 20-minute rant outlining her often tangential theories regarding Trump’s connections to Russia.

Maddow did not unveil the relevant tax documents until 23 minutes into the show, revealing that Donald Trump had made more than $150 million in income in 2005 and paid $38 million in income taxes that year.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton asserted that Donald Trump deliberately avoided releasing his tax returns in order to conceal “that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes.” This defamatory innuendo was, of course, widely repeated across the entire left-wing media, which quickly transformed Clinton’s assertion into a whole new “fact” that was blindly repeated as if it were gospel.

Now we know that assertion — and the so-called “facts” based on the assertion — were pure hogwash. Not only did Donald Trump pay $38 million in taxes in 2005, he actually paid significantly higher taxes than former president Barack Obama paid (18.7% in 2015). He also paid a higher tax rate than Comcast, which owns MSNBC and paid an average tax rate of 24% from 2008 – 2013.

At the same time, nine significant MSNBC on-camera personalities have had tax liens filed against them for failure to pay their own taxes, making a complete mockery of any attempt at tax dodging “authority” reporting at the discredited network.

Maddow was in such a rush to release the “bombshell,” she apparently failed to first find out what was in it

Perhaps more shocking than the sudden release of President Trump’s 2005 tax return is the foolishness of Rachel Maddow, a vocal Trump critic, who apparently had no idea what was in the tax return until it was released. If this sounds familiar, it should: Nancy Pelosi similarly claimed we needed to pass Obamacare in order to “find out what’s in it.”

This “black box” philosophy of legislative genius has now been sloppily embraced as a kind of “journalistic genius” at MSNBC. The new mantra of the fake news (left-wing) media is as follows: First, report the story. Then do the research and hope your story checks out.

The more informed, thinking individuals reading this analysis will note that genuine journalism takes place in precisely the reverse order: First, you do the research. Then you report the story.

But in the rush to discredit Trump, no actual journalistic investigations are needed by the mindless, fact-less media. The mere whiff of a document that might show something about Trump is more than enough to justify its ridiculous hyping to the whole world… even if its release only proves you’re a complete idiot.

Rachel Maddow is an entire fake news parade unto herself

Not only does the release of President Trump’s tax return prove that Trump has paid, at minimum, tens of millions of dollars in personal income taxes to the federal government; it also makes for yet another powerful demonstration of the fake news fakery of the left-wing media. If they ever had a desire to report real news, they would report that Donald Trump paid more taxes to the federal government than perhaps 99% of all Americans, while MSNBC’s own on-air talent has been caught avoiding paying taxes.

Once again, the entire fake news media just got caught in a really big lie. And once again, their attempts to smear and defame President Trump have backfired miserably and made them look like complete fools. It’s only fitting, of course, since they are complete fools.

Follow more news about President Trump at Trump.news.