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Maddow Now Says Her Audience Overhyped Trump's Tax Returns

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is now saying that any overhyping of her Tuesday night report on President Donald Trump's tax returns was done "externally."

Maddow has received criticism for initially tweeting on Tuesday that she obtained Trump's tax returns, without providing further detail.

Maddow continued saying other people leapt to the conclusion that her tax return story would reveal a scandal, according to the Associated Press.


"Because I have information about the president doesn't mean that it's necessarily a scandal," Maddow told the AP. "It doesn't mean that it's damning information. If other people leapt to that conclusion without me indicating that it was, that hype is external to what we did."

In what appeared to be an attempt to show Maddow overhyping the release, the Fox News morning show "Fox & Friends" played clips from Maddow's report.

"I believe this is the only set of the President's federal taxes that reporters have ever gotten ahold of," Maddow says in the clip. "For the record, the first amendment gives us the right to publish this return. It is not illegal published, nor are we fake. Pinch me, I'm real."

Fox News also reported that relations between NBC and MSNBC are tense, as NBC believes they were kept in the dark on Maddow's report and are "now embarrassed over the overblown story."