Trump’s 2005 tax return was revealed on The Rachel Maddow Show last night, and all it did was make him look good.

No one is sure where it came from or who released it, but given that it shows he paid an effective tax rate of 25% in that year, even with losses of $105 million, it’s hard to imagine this reflecting poorly on him. This leads one to suspect that Trump or someone close to him leaked it deliberately to improve his image, to help dispel rumors that he has routinely paid little or no federal income tax.

The reveal was a resounding embarrassment for Maddow, who hyped it on her Twitter account in the hours preceding, and then took her sweet time getting around to the big reveal during her show. In the end, the debacle made Maddow look far worse than Trump.

My advice to Trump’s opposition: don’t do shit like this. This is exactly the sort of thing that gives credibility to Trump and his cronies, when an utter nothingburger is played up as an earth-shattering revelation. Trump paying his taxes is a dog-bites-man story. Nobody cares, nobody has any reason to care. Knowing that he apparently paid his taxes one year doesn’t help discredit him, it just makes his opponents look desperate.