It's hard to #followthemoney if Trump won't release his tax returns

Even Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump’s normally ebullient campaign manager, must be thinking it’s been an awful week. There was his horrendous debate performance on Monday, then the ridiculous week-long row over beauty queen Alicia Machado, and now the New York Times has splashed the story that Trump may have avoided paying federal tax for 18 years.

Of these three, the Times story is probably the least damaging. Nobody thinks Donald Trump a dedicated socialist; he certainly isn’t ashamed of ducking his fiscal responsibilities. As he put it in the debate when Clinton accused him of avoiding tax, ‘that makes me smart’. The Machado spat — and his extraordinary 3am outburst on Twitter– was worse news for Team Trump, in that it destroyed an impression that had built up over recent weeks that the campaign had become slicker. In recent weeks, pundits and politicos have taken to applauding Trump’s ‘message discipline’. No longer.