Donald Trump joined Fox News' Greta Van Susteren on Thursday to discuss the Democratic Convention and the topic of his tax returns came up.
Previously, Trump praised Greta for backing him up when she said he shouldn't release the returns that were being audited, but she pulled a switcheroo on him during the interview and acted like a journalist.
And in the process she exposed Trump's excuse as being the phony that it is when he refused to release un-audited tax returns because as he put it, "most people don't care" except for a few media people.
For almost a year, Trump has been using the excuse that he can't release his tax returns because of an IRS audit. Now that excuse has been rendered null and void.
The Fox News host began by asked the Republican nominee if Hillary Clinton released her Wall Street transcripts of her speeches, "would you give up or surrender, or let the media see your tax returns, at least for the years not currently in audit."
Trump said that he didn't think her Goldman Sachs transcripts meant very much to him, but harped on the deleted emails off her server. "...there is a way of finding emails and I've always heard that."
Donald seems not to know that the FBI did recover those emails.
Then he brought up Greta's prior support of Trump's tax return claim when he said, "You're the one who said recently, and I've used your name a coupe of times, that 'if I had a client who was under a routine audit by the IRS, I wouldn't let him go public till the audit is over.'
Greta agreed and said, "I said, as a lawyer, for the years under audit, absolutely, but now let me be a political person or a media person. For the years at least not in audit, because there's certainly years that are not in audits, to give sort of a general idea and sort of calm the dogs and the people that are after your tax returns to look at them."
"Why not release those that are not in audit even if they go back a number of years?"
Boom!
Why not, Donald? if you're in such great shape with yuge wealth, why not release tax returns from say 2007-2011?
This is a big news story.
The most obvious reason is because there is very damning evidence contained in his tax returns that will show that he isn't what he says he is.
Hillary Clinton released eight years of tax returns so why can't Donald?
Trump's response would be comical if it wasn't deadly serious.
"Well, I haven't had much pressure, I'll be honest, most people don't care. The only people that care are certain people in the media."
Say, what? Millions of people care as does the entire news media.
Even members of the Republican party have demanded to see his tax returns, including the GOP's 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
It is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters, especially one who has not been subject to public scrutiny in either military or public service.
And then Trump cried that the media would use the tax returns against him, like they did to Mitt Romney. "Harry Reid lied about them. He told a dirty lie."
If there's no there there, what is he afraid of?
I know the media and all of us have been swamped covering the two political conventions, but it's time for the media to rest up this weekend and then come back strong.
This is a big news story.
A good start would be for them to demand to see his tax returns. Even the ones that aren't being audited. That's not too much to ask since every presidential candidate has released them for thirty years.
