TYPE “Trump system rigged” into the Google search bar and you’ll get more than 500,000 hits. I didn’t inspect all of them but the first 50 were variants of Donald Trump complaining that the Republican primary process was tilted against him.

That’s beyond ironic. Mr. Trump and his family have been the beneficiaries of a great rigged system: the tax code, which bestows huge advantages on the real estate business. Throughout his career, Mr. Trump has not only grabbed for every loophole and legal lever he could find, he’s boasted about it.

“I’ve taken advantage of the laws of this country, like other people,” Mr. Trump has said.

The Republican front-runner has been dodging releasing his returns on the specious grounds that he was being audited. On Tuesday, he told The Associated Press that he wouldn’t release them before the election — period. On Wednesday, he denied saying this, reversed course and said,“Hopefully before the election I’ll release.”

“There’s nothing to learn from them,” he said in the Associated Press interview.

I’ll bet there’s plenty to learn. More likely, Mr. Trump doesn’t want us to know how small his tax hit is, something that he bragged about earlier in the campaign, before realizing that it could come back to bite him.