The Slatest

Trump Just Casually Claimed That He Can Decide Which Stories Get Published in the National Enquirer 

National Enquirer.
A sample of the Enquirer’s objective, reasonable Trump coverage.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by National Enquirer.

Donald Trump is known to be pals with the man who runs the National Enquirer, David Pecker, and there is a variety of evidence that the tabloid is basically a wing of Trump’s PR operation. In a tweet this morning, Trump seemed to confirm that he, in fact, has a personal hand in deciding what the Enquirer publishes:

That’s in reference to his ongoing feud with MSNBC Morning Joe co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, which you can read about here, although, for the good of our democracy, you probably shouldn’t. And here is a story the Enquirer published earlier and June (and re-posted this morning) about Brzezinski and Scarborough’s “sleazy cheating scandal,” i.e. they used to be married to other people but began dating while working together, a fact that was not a particularly well-kept or scandalous secret. (They’re now engaged, and Scarborough denies that he called Trump and asked for the story to be killed.)

via Eric Levitz