Snow: Clintons' Failure to File 2007 Return Shows 'They're Human'

Change font size:  A |  A

Like characters in a Currier & Ives scene, a gentle snow has covered the Clintons. Make that a gentle Snow . . .

On yesterday's Hardball, Chris Matthews, smelling a rat, was livid when he learned that the Clintons had failed to file or release their 2007 tax return. But on today's Good Morning America, Kate Snow managed to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear of the Clinton's delay. Far from depicting it as a means to evade the promulgation of inconvenient facts, Snow painted the procrastination as proof of the Clintons' humanity. Compare and contrast . . .

HARDBALL APRIL 4TH

DAVID SHUSTER: As far as the details we do not have the details from last year. We don't have those specific consulting fees for last year.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I was predicting [that] . . . now Joan [Walsh of Salon.com], it seems to me everybody wanted to know where the Clintons got their income. Is there any sticky income? We're not getting that information. The one thing we were promised to get.

JOAN WALSH: It's a little disturbing Chris. I think lots of busy people file extensions, and maybe they're going to claim that. They said they were working hard to get the details for 2007 out to people. And they certainly haven't done that today . . .

MATTHEWS: Late Friday afternoon is the garbage dump in journalism. They dumped the bad news, they're not going to tell us where the former president got his income.
. . .
They haven't released their returns from last year. The one thing they promised to do, give us your returns, and they haven't done it. They dumped out the bad news Friday. Joan, all they've done is tell us they're not going to release the [2007] returns. They can talk about extensions. They are not going to give this before April 15th. They're not doing it.

GOOD MORNING AMERICA APRIL 5TH

KATE SNOW: Now they were generous. Over eight years they donated about $10 million to charity, also gave family members no-interest loans. And they're human, too, Bill! You know how many of us haven't gotten our taxes done yet? Well they filed for an extension for 2007; they haven't quite gotten them done yet.

Aww. Could Kate possibly be that credulous? Does she imagine Hillary up at 3 AM poring over the returns: "Bill, how many ties did you drop off at the Salvation Army last year?" Does Snow imagine that if it had been in Hillary's political interest to have those returns filed, they wouldn't have been? How can the woman "ready on day one" to lead an entire nation not be ready on April 15th to take care of her personal business?