Consider these four factors …
* Donald J. Trump boasts about his fabulous wealth.
* He questions whether his opponent for the presidency, Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, is fit enough for the job she seeks.
* Trump has questioned President Obama’s constitutional eligibility to hold the office he and Clinton want.
* Trump also has asked out loud about whether the president really was an academic star at Harvard University and at Columbia University.
Those four circumstances have created an issue where none should exist. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, won’t release his tax returns to show us that he is as rich as he says he is. Nor will he release his complete medical records to prove, as his doctor said, that he would be the healthiest man ever to serve as president.
Why are these things relevant? They are relevant because Trump made them so!
He’s the one who’s raised the issue. Trump seeks to be the first major-party candidate for president since 1976 to refuse to release his complete tax returns. And he does all this after making other people’s records an issue.
Trump’s supporters say the tax records are irrelevant. They don’t matter. So what if we learn he pays little in taxes? Other Americans do the very same thing, seeking to pay as little in tax as is legally permissible.
OK, fine. Then let’s see just what he pays. Let’s see if he’s as rich as he keeps telling us he is.
The medical records? Those, too, need to be made public. A goofy letter written in the span of five minutes by a physician isn’t enough.
All this stuff matters because Donald Trump has turned our attention to it.