Pecker Slapped
The man behind MAGA’s Völkischer Beobachter comes clean.
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1. Enquiring Minds
This week, David Pecker testified in Donald Trump’s criminal trial. Pecker was the longtime publisher of the National Enquirer, America’s foremost supermarket tabloid. Over the course of 2015 and 2016, the Enquirer became politically active on behalf of Trump, first in the Republican presidential primary and then in the general election campaign.
Now we know why.
Pecker—who had been friendly with Trump for decades—made an agreement with Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, in August 2015. By the terms of the agreement, Pecker would use the Enquirer to run stories helpful to Trump’s campaign and kill stories that might hurt Trump.
There is a great deal to say about this arrangement because it is entirely new in modern American politics. Trump and Pecker chose to turn an existing media property into an actual propaganda arm of the campaign—taking direction directly from Trump’s consigliere.
And they did so under the cover of night. Say what you will about Pravda and the Daily Worker—at least they acknowledged that they were wholly owned subsidiaries of the Communist Party.
The National Enquirer pretended that it was on the level—just a normal tabloid doing normal tabloid stuff.
In taking in the testimony of David Pecker, it is tempting to say that he was the Joseph Goebbels of the MAGA movement, but that’s not quite right. Pecker is much closer to Dietrich Eckart.
Let’s talk about this villain.