Michael Smerconish: David Pecker Exposes The National Enquirer

Source:Michael Smerconish with a look at Donald Trump's tabloid political world.

Source:The New Democrat

"Enquiring Minds.... 

From Michael Smerconish

"David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, testified at Donald Trump's trial Tuesday that the tabloid completely manufactured a negative story in 2016 about the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, who was then Trump's rival for the GOP presidential nomination.

The paper had published a photo allegedly showing Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963, not long before Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

Trump repeatedly referred to the story on the campaign trail and in interviews.

“I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?” Trump said in an interview with Fox News in May 2016. “It’s horrible.”

Manhattan prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked Pecker about the story's origins during the trial Tuesday in Manhattan. Pecker said that then-National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard and the tabloid's research department got involved, and Pecker indicated that they faked the photo that was the foundation for the story.

“We mashed the photos and the different picture with Lee Harvey Oswald. And mashed the two together. And that’s how that story was prepared — created I would say," Pecker said on the witness stand.

Asked by Steinglass whether Cruz had gained popularity in the presidential race at the time, Pecker said, “I believe so.”

The revelation came up as the prosecution focused on negative articles that were published by the tabloid about Trump's Republican opponents at the time. Pecker explained that it was Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer, who would orchestrate the planting of these stories.

Pecker said Cohen would call and say they'd like his publication to run an article on a certain candidate, adding that Cohen would then send him a piece about Cruz, for example, and the National Enquirer "would embellish it from there."

Pecker suggested that Trump was directly involved in the process, too. He said that the negative stories about Trump's opponents were published as part of an arrangement that was struck in 2015 at a Trump Tower meeting that also included a directive to write positive stories about the real estate mogul." 

From NBC News

Sorry for the tabloid title of this post. Actually, that's a lie. I'm definitely not sorry for the title. But what's a little lie anyway when you are talking about a tabloid publication anyway? Lies for tabloids are what food are for restaurants, gas is for cars, lawyers, politicians, fundamentalist preachers even for prostitutes, it's how they stay in business. 

I think the David Pecker revelations (I'm still having a hard time writing his last name without laughing and I'm 47 years old) is a perfect example of why American voters are stereotyped as stupid. At least gullible because here you had this well-known, national tabloid magazine, that promoted stories about Donald J. Trump back in 2015-16, to get him into The White House and you had 10s of millions of American voters, who simply bought all of those garbage stories. 

10s of millions of American voters. probably mostly Independents, as well as some blue-collar Democrats, who perhaps weren't ready for a female President of the United States, bought those garbage stories, as if they were buying an 1985 Ford Escort, thinking that car was as good as a Mercedes SEL, or a Jaguar sedan, etc. Without doing any of their homework: "Hey, if The National Enquirer says that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the JFK assassination, it must be true." 

And so yesterday, you have the Manhattan prosecutors laying out exactly what The National Enquirer was doing in partnership with Donald J. Trump, with the man who was in charge of this entire scheme, their publisher at the time David Pecker, exposing (pun in intended) this whole operation. And they have all the texts, the emails, the phone calls even, to back up all of Mr. Pecker's claims here on what they were doing for Mr. Trump.