Is it just me, or do most non-Fox viewers feel this way?
Yesterday the New York Times released a story about the genius’s tax returns from the eighties. Turns out that he lost billions of dollars and the returns emit a strong odor of fraud. I’m not saying it’s not worth reporting, but if you’d asked me to write down what one could expect from his tax returns, I don’t think I’d have guessed wrong.
This is a pattern with Trump. Nothing surprises even the casual observer, never mind the political junkie. Consider this description of two Pulitzer Prize winning stories:
The New York Times received the explanatory reporting prize for an 18-month investigation that revealed how the future president and his relatives avoided paying roughly half a billion dollars’ worth of taxes. The Wall Street Journal won the national reporting award for disclosing clandestine payoffs made by the president’s associates before the 2016 election to two women who had alleged affairs with Mr. Trump.
I’m not saying the prizes were undeserved, but on the other hand, both papers were just telling us what we already knew.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe there have been times when we’ve been surprised when politicians were exposed as venal, corrupt, or frauds. In those days, I’m pretty sure, an investigative reporter could uncover a truly shocking story. Nowadays the poor scribes are reduced to simply confirming what we already know.
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