Let's pause here for a second and take inventory. What is Trump's reaction to this disclosure? I haven't googled it so I honestly, sincerely, do not know for sure but I assume it's "FAKE NEWS!", right? Then, in the next tweet, "THE FAKE NEWS REPORTERS AT THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES SHOULD BE IN JAIL!" Right?
I'm pretty confident that's what it's going to be but I also think this with equal confidence: Trump is devastated right now. He knows it's true, he knows what he paid in taxes. He knows...yes knows but also feels that he is a fool; that he has been found out...Like the Wizard of Oz screenshot I posted of him so many times in 2016. The curtain is pulled back, etc...Trump feels right now like the Wizard did. But Trump is not going to react as the Wizard ultimately did. "Okay, yes, I'm a fraud." That turned the Wizard into a lovable, sympathetic figure. Trump is going to react, I predict, in the predictable Trumpian manner above, as the Wizard initially did--"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" That would have kept the Wizard an awful, mean man. Ultimately the Wizard tearfully confessed. That made him a good guy. Trump is not going to confess. Which brings us to the second reason for this pause.
This ain't Hollywood. This isn't heaven. You don't get brownie points for confessing to the police on earth. You get jail. That's where Trump is going. A confession just greases his track. He's not going to do that. He's going to fight and fight with all his might. He's going to take the advice his crooked lawyer friend Roy Cohn once gave him: "When they punch, you punch back twice as hard." Ironic, isn't it? Roy Cohn had a Wizard of Oz moment once upon a time, remember? Ah, let's go back for just a moment to 1954 and take a look at Roy Cohn's moment:
Senator McCarthy: May -- may I say that Mr. Welch talks about this being cruel and reckless. He was just baiting -- He has been baiting Mr. Cohn here for hours, requesting that Mr. Cohn, before sundown, get out of any department of the government anyone who is serving the Communist cause......
Mr. Welch: We know he belonged to the Lawyers' Guild.
Senator McCarthy: No, let me finish --
Mr. Welch: And Mr. Cohn nods his head at me. I did you, I think, no personal injury, Mr. Cohn?