Topic: CNSNews.com
On Sept. 24, CNSNews.com published part of a rant by Chris Jacobs headlined "Politico Published 20 Stories About Trump’s Taxes And Only 1 About Joe Biden’s." CNS only published the first few paragraphs, but the rest is at right-wing site The Federalist, where Jacobs' thinking goes awry:
I examined Politico, a publication many “inside-the-Beltway” types read. It showed a yawning gap between coverage of Joe Biden’s tax affairs compared to coverage of his predecessor.
Between January 21 and August 9 of this year, Politico ran at least 20 separate stories about Donald Trump’s taxes. By contrast, during the same period this year, Politico appears to have run only a single story related to Biden’s taxes, when the Bidens released their returns in May.
That story spent many more paragraphs talking about Trump not releasing his taxes (seven) than it did about Biden’s questionable use of this tax loophole (one). Therefore, some may consider what initially looks like a 20-to-1 disparity of stories about Trump’s taxes vis-à-vis Biden’s more like a 21-to-1, or 21-to-0, gap.
As Jacobs seems to conced but won't explicitly admit, the lesson here is that Trump's refusal to release his taxes made news outlets want to report on them, whereas Biden made his taxes public like every other presidential candidate of the past 40-plus years, thus making it a non-issue for him.Yet Jacobs made an attempt to justify his double standard:
I won’t argue the legal controversies about Trump’s taxes aren’t newsworthy—they clearly are. I have also previously stated that Trump should have released his taxes as president, and should get held to the same legal standard as everyone else if he did in fact violate any tax laws.
But Biden’s taxes are just as relevant as Trump’s, if not more so, given a combination of factors. Those include that Biden is the current president, as opposed to the former president. Also, unlike Trump, Biden has publicly advertised himself as a paragon of virtue regarding his taxes and financial affairs.
Jacobs went on to complain that Biden was a hypocrite for taking advantage of tax deductions and loopholes he has proposed eliminating. But that's just a lame gotcha -- rich right-wingers will tell you that nobody is legally obligated to pay more taxes than mandated. Indeed, other rich people have used the same loophole that Biden did, and Jacobs isn't lashing out at them. That's the real hypocrisy -- Jacobs can't prove Biden broke the law (because he didn't), so he has to attack Biden on something, anything.
We're willing to bet that Jacobs has never complained about Trump's absolute refusal to release his taxes the way he has nitpicked Biden's actual release.
