Donald Trump didn’t become the favorite for the Republican presidential nominee without having political talent_- not least his ability to unleash a torrent of verbiage that ducks a question. If he loses in the end, the guy should start up Trump Political School.

Consider the businessman’s response last Sunday to a question about when he would release his tax returns, as he has already promised to do. George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s "This Week" quoted our Saturday editorial calling on Mr. Trump to release his returns "so Republicans can know what they’re voting for."

Mr. Stephanopoulos: "Will you release them by Super Tuesday? Don’t Republican voters have a right to know?"

Mr. Trump erupted in that now-familiar and calculated way in which he pretends he is the victim of a great injustice:

"Well, first, no, I won’t. No, no, no, I won’t. I’m working on it. We’re working on, they’re massive. You saw pictures of me. But let me tell you about The Wall Street Journal. I have no respect whatsoever for The Wall Street Journal. I don’t think they know what they’re doing.

"They have taken me on so much it’s so ridiculous. Every day, editorials, bad editorials, and they had a poll come out, which was so wrong. I said they should fire their pollster and they should fire their editorial staff because I think these are people that don’t know what they’re doing.

"I don’t even want to read it very much anymore. They’re so wrong."

So Mr. Trump shouldn’t have to release his tax returns because he says The Wall Street Journal doesn’t like him. The truth is we cover him like any other politician, and we defended him against the pope and Ted Cruz. This is the second time he’s called on us to be fired, which are moments we’ll always treasure. The first time he also threatened to sue us if we didn’t apologize for noting his lack of trade knowledge; we didn’t apologize.

Back to Mr. Trump: "But if you look at their polls that they came out with one day and two days, two polls before the election, they turned out to be so wrong that they should honestly they should fire their pollster. So I don’t care what The Wall Street Journal says, what they say doesn’t_and, in fact, if anything, I would do the opposite because then it’ll turn out to be more correct."

Our editorial board has nothing to do with the WSJ/NBC/Marist polls, and sometimes polls are wrong, but by now all his listeners heard is that the newspaper must be biased against him. Mr. Stephanopoulos tries again: "So no release before you’re a nominee?"

Mr. Trump: "No, at some point. Well, they’ll talk about it. At some point we’ll release. There’s no rush. Why is there such a rush? I’m supposed to rush like crazy?

"By the way, I released my financial statements which are much more important. I released my financial statements and everybody was amazed at how big and how great the company is, much bigger than they thought and it’s a great company. Very little debt, tremendous cash flow, some of the best assets in the world.

"And I say that only because that’s the kind of thinking the United States needs now because our country is in financial trouble and military trouble. We’re in every kind of trouble you can have. Our country’s a mess. We’re going to strengthen the border. We’re going to do all of the things that you and I have been talking about for a long time now, George. And it’s going to be great."

Mr. Stephanopoulos: "Mr. Trump, thanks for joining us this morning."

What a performance. Mr. Trump says he doesn’t have to release his tax returns because his business is fabulous, though at some point he may release them, maybe, but there’s no rush because, well, he doesn’t say, though in January he said "we’re working on that now" and that they would be "very beautiful." In any case he’s going to fix the country because he’s a business success. By the time Mr. Stephanopoulos surrenders for the next guest, viewers can’t remember what the original question was.

Mr. Trump should release his tax returns now to avoid Mitt Romney’s mistake of waiting for Democrats to make an issue of it, which they will. As the potential GOP nominee, he also owes the details to Republicans so they know as much as they can about the man who would be President. Is there something in those tax returns you want to hide, Mr. Trump?

– The Wall Street Journal