MSNBC Contributor Repeats False Claim That Americans Don’t Care About Donald Trump's Tax Returns

Michael Steele: “Show Me The Poll Where 60 Percent Of The People Are Saying, 'I Want To See [Trump’s] Tax Returns'”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

On Morning Joe, MSNBC contributor and former chairperson of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele claimed that “the American people apparently aren’t” “exercised” by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns, saying, “Show me the poll where 60 [[%]] percent of the people are saying, ‘I want to see your tax returns.’” The claim that Americans don’t care about Trump’s tax returns is often repeated by Trump surrogates and left unchecked by network interviewers,despite a late August Quinnipiac poll showing that 74 percent of all likely voters and 62 percent of likely Republican voters want Trump to release his tax returns. From the September 15 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

DONNY DEUTSCH: Why does this man not have to do what every man or woman who's run for office -- why is he held to a different standard? Why? Tax returns that shows how you lived your life as an American citizen, how  you've owned up to your responsibilities, and how day after day, every media outlet does not pound, pound, pound. You are running for president of the United States. How dare you say we're not going to see your tax returns. How dare you insult the American public. Because you're in audit? Everybody has come out and said that has nothing to do with it. 

MIKA BRZEZINSKI (CO-HOST): Michael Steele?

MICHAEL STEELE: Donny, I appreciate your exercised viewpoint there, but you know, this is the reality of it. You're exercised, the press is exercised, but the American people apparently aren't. Show me the poll where 60 percent of the people are saying “I want to see your tax returns.” That's Donald Trump's safe haven here. He's so past that at this point. It's not resonating the way it resonates for you with a lot of other people, and that's why you don't see the pressure on him.