On Twitter, Trump criticizes reporter who revealed tax return

There was so much interest, in fact, that both Maddow’s blog site, maddowblog.com, and the website of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston both crashed.

And Johnston is hardly someone “nobody ever heard of”.

Mr Trump has long insisted the American public was not interested in his returns and said little could be learned from them. Reporters receive information from anonymous sources all the time. On the contrary, the White House seems to have acknowledged the opposite. In 1995, Trump reported a loss of more than $900 million, largely as a result of financial turmoil at his casinos. He claimed he can’t because he’s under audit. He can’t be under audit for multiple past years.

Van Jones, who previously worked in the Obama administration, joined host Anderson Cooper to discuss the disappointment of many behind the release of Trump’s 2005 tax returns.

Johnston said he found the president’s 1040 form “in the mail”, a story Trump wasn’t buying as he took aim at Maddow’s parent network.

And moments after the president’s Twitter message about the taxes, he also criticised a new music video by rapper Snoop Dogg, in which the musician points a toy gun at a clown dressed as the president.

Trump paid just $5.3 million in regular federal tax, perhaps because he was continuing to benefit from large losses he suffered when his real estate empire collapsed in the 90s. Trump is in favor of eliminating the alternative minimum tax, but without it he would have paid a rate of less than 4 percent.

The White House said Trump, as head of the Trump Organization, had a responsibility “to pay no more tax than legally required”.

“And, you know full well that Trump – President Trump and his family are complying with all the ethical rules, everything they need to do to step away from his businesses and be a full-time president”.