Donald Trump’s close relationship with David Pecker, the head of National Enquirer parent America Media Inc., paid off in 2016 when the supermarket tabloid endorsed the real estate mogul’s presidential campaign and helped bury scandals that might have cost him votes.
But the president won’t be able to count on the same kind of support during his reelection bid next year.
Not only has AMI agreed to sell the 90-year-old tabloid to Hudson News CEO James Cohen, it is operating under an immunity agreement that could be discarded if the government finds any further campaign finance violations on the company’s part.
“I doubt if we’ll see the new National Enquirer endorsing Donald Trump,” said Jerry George, the tabloid’s former Los Angeles bureau chief. “As far as attacking his opponents, I think they’re going to be under such scrutiny that if they try to do what they did in 2016 by turning Hillary and Ted Cruz and all the opponents into cartoon characters, they’re going to get blasted immediately.”
On the other hand, Trump probably won’t have to worry much about the Enquirer printing negative stories about him, given his penchant for enlisting his attorney, Charles Harder, to threaten possible legal action in such cases, George said.
“I think the new owner will tread cautiously, and I think the new owner will realize that politics certainly doesn’t sell, and inside the Trump marriage is potentially litigious,” he added.
The $100 million sale of the Enquirer comes after Pecker and Dylan Howard, AMI’s chief content officer, opened the company to legal risk by engaging in a tactic known as “catch and kill” to suppress negative stories about Trump in 2016.
AMI paid former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story claiming an affair with Trump, which it then buried. After the deal came under scrutiny by federal investigators, Pecker and Howard entered into nonprosecution agreements last year admitting to the payment.
Pecker likely wants to put distance between himself and the Enquirer, George said, and efforts to get back into Trump’s good graces may be futile.
“There’s no love lost between President Trump and David Pecker these days,” he said. “I doubt if he’ll be joining Trump for paella at Mar-a-Lago any time soon.”
Earlier this year, the Enquirer found itself at the center of another firestorm after it published racy text messages between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — a frequent target of Trump’s Twitter barbs — and his mistress, Lauren Sanchez.
Bezos then accused the Enquirer and AMI of blackmailing him and shared a message from Howard in which he threatened to publish intimate photos of Bezos.
The post spurred immediate speculation the Enquirer’s story was intended to benefit Trump, given Bezos’ ownership of the Washington Post, whose coverage of the White House the president dislikes.
As the company grappled with the scandals, Anthony Melchiorre, who runs the hedge fund that is AMI’s principal owner, moved to sell the Enquirer and two of its sister publications: the Globe and the National Examiner.
The purchase by Cohen, whose company operates newsstands in transportation hubs, was announced April 18.
“The sale of these brands shows their vitality in today’s newsstand marketplace where they continue to generate nearly $30 million in profit annually,” Pecker said in a statement.
The deal includes a multi-year service contract that AMI said will “generate substantial fees” for providing publication, financial, and distribution services for the three titles. The contract indicates that, while there may be a new owner, the magazine’s infrastructure is largely staying the same, said Stu Zakim, a former senior vice president for the company.
That means the Enquirer and AMI may remain allies to the president, though in a less overt way. “He knows they have his back, and that’s quite a luxury to have,” Zakim said.
While the Enquirer may shy away from publishing glowing stories about Trump, it could assist the president by turning its sights on his political opponents. Already, more than a dozen Democrats vying to unseat Trump have entered the 2020 race.
“They can go after every Democrat candidate on some topic,” Zakim added. “The question is, do they want to use that real estate now or wait until the field shrinks? That will be the test as to where they’re going to lie.”
