Trust should be earned

In a 28-day tenure already marred by many blunders—both by his staff and by himself—President Trump’s rambling news conference Thursday, riddled with misstatements of fact and attacks on reporters, stands out mainly for its consistency with what came before.

At several key moments, Trump dismissed questions about any connections he and his circle may have had with Russia. “The whole Russian thing, that’s a ruse,” he declared. News reports suggesting that some of his associates had contact with Russian officials during the election were “fake,” he insisted—even as he condemned the leakers who released classified information to the media. The bottom line, according to the president, is this: “I own nothing in Russia. I have no loans in Russia. I don’t have any deals in Russia.”

This would be good news, and it may well be true. If only the public could trust it.

Trump ran as the least transparent major-party candidate in modern U.S. history, and he has done little since his victory in November to change that. Bucking decades of practice, he refused to release his tax returns, after promising he would do so. His excuses did not wash. Though his recent returns may be under audit, nothing is stopping him from releasing the documents he swore were true when he sent them to the Internal Revenue Service.

There is certainly nothing preventing him from releasing returns from earlier years. If Trump wants Americans to take his assurances about his international business arrangements seriously, releasing his tax information is the starting point.