While many of us in the Northeast were just getting back inside after a long day of shoveling during Winter Storm Stella on Tuesday, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow decided it was time to set Twitter and the political world ablaze.

At 7:36 p.m., Maddow Tweeted: “BREAKING: We’ve got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC. (Seriously).” She followed up less than an hour later: “What we’ve got is from 2005… the President’s 1040 form… details to come tonight 9PM ET, MSNBC.”

Investigative journalist David Cay Johnston of DCReport.org, who said Trump’s 2005 tax return just showed up one day in his mailbox, would join her during the show to discuss.

Before Maddow even signed on, The White House had already denounced the anchor and the reports, but confirmed that Trump did indeed pay taxes in said obtained tax return.

In response to Maddow’s (and Johnston’s) “scoop,” The White House stated in response: “You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago” (even though it’s not illegal to do so).

The statement, according to The Los Angeles Times, did acknowledge that Trump paid $38 million in taxes while earning over $150 million 12 years ago. Apparently the media’s narrative of Trump avoiding tax payments has been squashed … for now.

Since Maddow made it sound like she had this Earth-shattering smoking gun in her hands – teasing the Twitter world with what she made sound like it could be epic takedown of the POTUS – I figured I would tune into MSNBC at 9:00 p.m. to see if this was actually for real.

Pretty sure this was the first time I ever turned on The Rachel Maddow Show, and it’s a safe bet that I will probably never flip to MSNBC at 9:00 p.m. ever again – I don’t really think I was missing much.

I don’t know if this was a stunt, but it definitely felt to me like a ratings-grab on Maddow’s part, and it was absolutely terrible, unwatchable, pathetic television.

Like so many other casual viewers interested in Maddow’s “BREAKING NEWS,” I was left wondering why I even bothered to turn this show on in the first place.

Maddow spent almost 20 minutes going on a drawn-out, rambling monologue, from Trump’s resistance to release his taxes and his breaking precedent in which past candidates had done so; to Trump buying a house in Palm Beach, Fla. in 2004 for $40 million and then selling it to a Russian oligarch for $100 million; to suggesting that we need his tax returns to make sure that Trump is not paying off past benefactors and Russia.

Maddow took this nearly 20 minute monologue to rant about why presidents should release their tax returns, and build this whole “BREAKING” story up that she teased on her Twitter.

She fear mongered and tried to rile up viewers with statements such as “the greater concern, the worry, [is] that this president might be financially beholden to an individual, to an institution, to a country,” and that we will never know the answer to this without his tax returns.

Maddow made it seem like she had all the answers right there on her desk, just waiting to drop this bombshell.

Except less than a minute later, Maddow held up only the first two pages of Trump’s 2005 tax return – yup, all two of them.

And when the show returned from the commercial break, Johnston floated the idea that Trump himself may have even mailed the return to the journalist – and then proceeded to say a lot of nothing for the remainder of the segment, confirming that yes, Trump made $150 million and paid $38 million in taxes in 2005.

The Tweet sent out by Maddow an hour and a half before going on air was nothing but click-bait in an effort to drive viewers to MSNBC for her show (strange, since she beat every show in her timeslot the week of March 6 and was also number one in the key 25-54 demographic according to The Hollywood Reporter).

Maddow obviously had to know that Tweeting out her “BREAKING” news that she possessed a Trump tax return was going to create a firestorm and draw attention.

Can’t blame her for promoting her show I guess, but it really just seems like she sucked everyone in and took 20 minutes to go on a Trump rant – because we just haven’t heard enough of those …

After viewers were finished suffering through her opening ranting and raving, we really learned nothing other than in this random year of 2005, Trump made a whole lot of money and he paid his share of taxes.

The “BREAKING” news she teased really was nothing special.

Click – time to find something else to watch.

Seemed to me that Maddow, a known Liberal, tried to make this all about herself with a self-important, prolonged monologue rather than actually reporting the news that she claimed she had.

She totally buried the lede, but that’s okay because I’m sure she snaked a few more million viewers over to MSNBC for her big “reveal” of her “scoop.”

Of course, Trump responded in typical Trump fashion early Wednesday morning on Twitter – dismissing the whole story as “FAKE NEWS!” But was he really that far off?

Rachel Maddow was irrelevant to me before I wasted 20 minutes of my life listening to her talk about why presidents should release their tax returns and that Donald Trump made a lot of money in 2005, and she’s still irrelevant to me.

That’s okay – next time I hear she’s sitting on story, I’ll just wait ‘till the actual news hits the internet.