Shortly before her show Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow teased a major scoop:
Within an hour, her curtain-raiser was retweeted more than 70,000 times. She then took to Twitter again, clarifying that actually she only had part of a Trump tax return -- from 12 years ago:
Nonetheless, the story was already receiving wall-to-wall coverage in the media.
Maddow began the show with a lengthy introduction, attempting to set the stage for why Trump's tax returns are so important to publish. The seemingly interminable introduction quickly drew jeers and mockery from viewers on Twitter.
But even worse for Maddow, while she spent almost a half hour teasing her "news," other media outlets beat her to the punch.
At 9:07, The Daily Beast reported what Maddow had been teasing: That Trump's 2005 federal income tax return shows he paid $38 million on $150 million in come, meaning he paid an effective rate of 25 percent.
At 9:08, the Wall Street Journal reported Maddow's findings. I
It was only by around 9:30 Maddow finally got to the substance of her news, and by then most of her online audience had already written the story off as a nothing-burger.
Even the White House scooped Maddow, releasing information about the return while blasting the "desperate" Maddow for publishing the "stolen" returns:
In one interesting revelation, the return Maddow displayed on the air showed they were stamped, "client copy," leading some to ask whether Maddow herself was had.
