In hostile interviews with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Thursday, both NBC’s Today and ABC’s Good Morning America parroted the same liberal smear about Donald Trump’s tax returns to bash the President’s tax reform plan. Hosts on the respective morning shows did the Democrats’ bidding as they again demanded Trump release his returns.
On Today, co-host Matt Lauer snidely remarked to Mnuchin: “ Mr. Secretary, you’ve said the President has already revealed a lot of financial information, more than anyone. We could argue about that for an entire other segment.” He then insisted: “But doesn’t it make your job harder to go out and sell a tax plan that’s going to impact every American’s tax returns when the President of the United States has not been transparent with his own tax returns?”
Even before Mnuchin could finish his response to the biased question, fellow co-host Savannah Guthrie interrupted with another hit: “...just on the tax returns, you did say yesterday at your briefing the President has no intention to release his tax returns. He used to say he would when the audits were complete. Is it your understanding that he will never release his tax returns?”
Good Morning America co-host and former Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos worried that the tax plan would “have the potential to benefit President Trump in a pretty big way” and argued: “So this plan right now would be a tax cut for President Trump, wouldn’t it?”
After Mnuchin explained that the proposal was not about Trump’s tax returns and would benefit all Americans, an irritated Stephanopoulos declared: “Why don't the American people have a right to know how this will affect President Trump?...You say he’s released more information. He’s the only president in modern times since Nixon who hasn’t released his tax returns. That’s not more information. That’s far less.”
Without having to coordinate, the NBC and ABC hosts instinctively channeled the same Democratic Party attack line to grill Mnunchin and slam the President’s policy agenda.
All three networks interrogated Mnunchin on whether the tax plan was just "tax cuts for the rich."
