Long before President Trump blasted anonymous sources from the Oval Office, he was reportedly an anonymous source himself — for the National Enquirer. While Trump had been a subject of the Enquirer's coverage in the early 1990s, embarrassed by such headlines as "Trump's mistress cheats on Donald with Tom Cruise," all that changed when Trump's friend, David Pecker, became the publisher of the notorious tabloid in 1999, The New Yorker reports.
…Once Pecker took over [the National Enquirer], critical coverage of Trump vanished. "They have an agreement where David would not write anything that damages Donald," a senior [American Media, Inc.] official from this period told me.One employee said that Trump was also a frequent source for Enquirer stories. "When there was something going on in New York, David would talk with Trump about it. Trump provided David with stories directly," the employee said. "And, if Donald didn't want a story to run, it wouldn't run. You can put that in stone." Indeed, early in the 2016 campaign Pecker simply turned over the pages of the Enquirer to Trump, allowing the candidate to write columns under his own byline. [The New Yorker]
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