Last year, we ran a four-part series on the fascinating history of the National Enquirer, its parent company American Media, Inc. and its ties to the Trump administration. In light of the news over the last few days, we thought we'd do a quick primer...
The history of the National Enquirer cover sixty years of American history – touching on the New York Mafia, the DC corridors of power, the tabloid industry of Florida, newspaper strikes, commie witch-hunts, Soviet espionage and much, much more... popbitch.com/2017/10/the-un… 
The key players in the early years (1950s-80s) are:
– Generoso Pope Jr, the founding editor and son of a New York media magnate
– Frank Costello, the head of the New York mafia in the 40s/50s
– Roy Cohn, the shadiest motherfucker to ever earn a law degree
– Generoso Pope Jr, the founding editor and son of a New York media magnate
– Frank Costello, the head of the New York mafia in the 40s/50s
– Roy Cohn, the shadiest motherfucker to ever earn a law degree
We'll start with Costello. Without the New York mafia, it is highly likely the National Enquirer would never have existed – as it was initially bankrolled (in large part) by Frank Costello: the head of the Luciano/Genovese crime family.
Frank Costello was a BIG deal in 50s New York mafia. Not only did he sit at the head of the Five Families (the 'Capo di tutti Capi', the Boss of Bosses), he is supposedly the mobster that Brando modeled Don Corleone's distinctive voice on...
Week after week, Costello would give the editor of the Enquirer thousands of dollars in cash to cover his payroll and print run. His two conditions:
1/ To be paid back on time
2/ To have the Enquirer 'overlook' certain unflattering mob-adjacent stories
1/ To be paid back on time
2/ To have the Enquirer 'overlook' certain unflattering mob-adjacent stories
It worked that way for years, quite happily... until someone tried to bump Frank Costello off.
Generoso Pope Jr began to wonder if he was maybe in a little deep, but it wasn't until his security guard was found dead in the back of one of Enquirer's delivery trucks with a note knifed to his chest that read "DON'T FUCK WITH US" that he properly shat it and fled to Florida...
Unsurprisingly, Pope's brash, big city, mob-tinged attitude to tabloid journalism caused quite a stir in small-town Florida - but many of the world's most ruthless hacks wanted a piece of the action. So they flocked to him, making Boca Raton the capital of the Tabloid Triangle...
There, Pope laid the foundations of a company that would eventually come to control almost all of the supermarket tabloids on sale in America. A company called American Media Inc...
(The full story of Costello, Pope and the Tabloid Triangle is here popbitch.com/2017/10/i-the-…)
(The full story of Costello, Pope and the Tabloid Triangle is here popbitch.com/2017/10/i-the-…)
Costello wasn't the only one footing the bills at the Enquirer though. The magazine had another angel investor: Roy Cohn. Even in a story crammed full with bastards and bullies, Roy Cohn stands alone. He was absolutely ruthless.
Roy Cohn first came to national attention as the lawyer who secured the death penalty for two American citizens accused of being Soviet spies: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
(Al Pacino famously played him in Angels In America, opposite Meryl Streep as the ghost of Ethel)
(Al Pacino famously played him in Angels In America, opposite Meryl Streep as the ghost of Ethel)
Cohn's skill at catching and killing Commies put him on the radar of Senator Joseph McCarthy (he of the now infamous hearings). McCarthy hired Cohn and installed him as his right-hand man, whereupon he acted as the operation's muscle.
McCarthy ended up taking most of the flak from the ensuing shitstorm that Cohn's unconventional tactics whipped up. Cohn himself managed to escape with barely the skin on his arse – shifting into private practice, where he racked up a singularly inglorious Rolodex of clients...
Who was on Cohn's books at his private practice?
Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno: head of the Genovese crime family
Carmine "Cigar" Galante: head of the Bonanno crime family
John Joseph Gotti Jr: head of the Gambino crime family
All in all, a great bunch of lads...
Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno: head of the Genovese crime family
Carmine "Cigar" Galante: head of the Bonanno crime family
John Joseph Gotti Jr: head of the Gambino crime family
All in all, a great bunch of lads...
Roy Cohn also had one other significant client on his books, one who has spoken often about how he considers Cohn to be his biggest mentor: Donald J Trump...
Cohn represented a 27-year-old Trump in the federal lawsuit he was handed down in the 1970s for discriminatory rental and leasing practices. There, their mutual love of being total fucking cunts blossomed into a life-long friendship.
Throughout all of this, Roy Cohn was also helping to bankroll the National Enquirer. Why? Because Generoso Pope Jr and he were old schoolfriends. In fact, the two of them used to share a limousine to primary school together...
Roy Cohn eventually died in disgrace, disbarred from practice for multiple crimes, including breaking into the hospital room of a dying, senile millionaire and using their drugged and semi-conscious hand to trace their signature, making himself a co-executor to their will.
There's loads, loads, loads more to the Cohn story – the fuller story of which you can read here... popbitch.com/2017/10/ii-ang…
(NB: You'll notice there's a micropayment paywall up on this part of the story. That's because we're using a new system called Agate [@agatehq] to process small transactions on these long form pieces so we can sustain and fund the research, writing and hosting of these stories.)
Generoso Pope Jr (the founder-editor of the National Enquirer) realised he couldn't rely on mob boss Frank Costello and shitbag lawyer Roy Cohn to fund his magazine indefinitely – so hatched a plan to get it sold in the fancy new supermarkets that were popping all over America...
At his own expense, Pope had branded magazine racks built that were designed to fit in the deadspace he'd spotted was present at every supermarket checkout till. He lent the racks to supermarket bosses for free and cut them in on the cover price too. A win-win for both parties...
The Enquirer's sales spiked, and rival magazines were soon begging Pope to let them have some of the space in his branded racks. Which he did. For a fee. Very quickly, he found he was earning huge money not only from his own magazine, but from all of his competitors too...
Effectively, Gene Pope had moved into magazine real estate. By the time he died in 1988, everything was in place for a parent company (American Media, Inc) to begin formalising and consolidating these interests – by buying up all the magazines on those racks.
The man installed at the top of American Media, Inc – who would use this portfolio of competing titles to pool resources, buy up bad stories about his friends and dilute the evidence in tiny amounts across multiple mags? The guy who just got granted immunity: David J Pecker...
The third part of our four-part series ("Suburban Decay") explains exactly how Pecker was able to do this, and how the industry stranglehold that AMI has was used to silence Playboy playmate Karen McDougal about her affair with Donald Trump... popbitch.com/2017/10/iii-su…
Before David Pecker joined America Media Inc, he was CEO of Hachette Filipacchi where he set up a 'custom publishing operation' (i.e. a vanity press). One of the people to avail himself of that vanity press in 1997 was Donald Trump, who had Pecker print him Trump Style.
The fact that Pecker ran a vanity publishing company before starting at AMI is ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL to understanding what happened in the 2016 election. Put a pin in that information and remember it. It is the key to a lot of this story.
A SLIGHT DIVERSION NOW: There's been a development in this story since we first wrote it back in October 2017 and it's probably worth touching on here. It involves Omarosa Manigault Newman, and it explains why Pecker was so eager to pull such a legally dodgy favour for Trump.
In 2011, Omarosa's brother Jack Manigault was murdered. By this point, Omarosa had become famous as the star of many reality shows – including three Trump vehicles: The Apprentice, The Celebrity Apprentice and her own designated dating spin-off, The Ultimate Merger.
The National Enquirer sent an undercover reporter to infiltrate Jack Manigault's funeral who posed as a mourner, supposedly spoke to grieving family members, and then wrote the whole thing up as an exclusive interview. Omarosa, understandably, was horrified and threatened to sue.
Pecker was obviously rattled as he got his old buddy – and their mutual friend – Donald Trump to put in a call to Omarosa to see if he could pour a little oil on the troubled waters.
In exchange for withdrawing her legal action, Trump would get Omarosa a job on AMI's payroll – serving as West Coast Editor of the new magazine and website they were launching in early 2012, Reality Weekly. Omarosa accepted.
Together, Trump and Pecker used their personal relationship and the scattered corporate infrastructure of American Media Inc to launder this little legal problem into nothing. This one benefited Pecker; but Trump would later call in the favour in 2016, when running for president.
So how did all of this come to have any effect on the outcome of the 2016 US election? It's a little more complicated than it might first appear. We map it out in full in part four (Electile Dysfunction) popbitch.com/2017/10/iv-ele… but we'll recap some the more topical points here...
The easy read on the situation is that David Pecker consciously used American Media Inc to push pro-Trump/anti-opponent stories into the news cycle throughout 2015 and 2016. Which is true. That did happen. For example...
Every time one of the GOP candidates in the Republican primary started to pick up any momentum in their polling numbers, the Enquirer, Radar, Globe and other AMI titles would start running stories slamming the front runner. In Sept 2015, it was Carly Fiorina...
The next month, in Oct 2015, it was Ben Carson...
Then it was Marco Rubio...
They went in double hard on Jeb! Bush...
When the crowd had really thinned out, Ted Cruz started getting the proper, completely batshit Enquirer treatment...
Meanwhile, during the Republican Primaries, the Trump coverage looked like this...
Trump secures the GOP nomination and is put up against Hillary. You probably don't need telling what AMI's Hillary coverage has looked like over the years – but here you go...
We'll probably have cause to go back to the root source of a lot of these stories when the spotlight catches Roger Stone – but if you want to find out more about his involvement before all of that hits the fan, we talk about it in this... popbitch.com/2017/10/iv-ele…
Anyhow, the fact that AMI ran these stories isn't what affected the outcome of the election (even though it feels as if it must have done somehow). It was more subtle than that. And this is where you need to pluck the pin back out of the vanity publishing note we made you make...
To understand the Enquirer's effect, consider it this way: David Pecker runs American Media Inc like a giant vanity press – but instead of having a single rich benefactor who dictates the editorial stance, it is the readers themselves.
AMI engages in extremely comprehensive market research, conducting continual rolling telephone surveys to keep an open, ongoing dialogue with its readers to find out first hand what they are interested in reading. Who do they like? Who they hate? What are they keen to hear about?
What that research showed was that the readers they'd canvassed wanted to hear good stuff about Donald Trump (who they liked) and horrible stuff about Hillary (who they hated). As they're the ones paying for the magazine, that is what they got...
It might seem like an obvious point but when you view the National Enquirer/AMI less as a political influencer, and more as a business designed to cater to (and reflect) the existing attitudes, beliefs and desires of its voting customer base, it starts to make a lot more sense...
This makes the Enquirer a really useful bellwether when trying to take the political temperature of the public. You can see when various Trump allies have fallen out of favour with the man on the street, because that's when it's safe for the Enquirer to run bad stories on them...
There is, of course, miles more to the story than just this. We've tried to touch on much more of it here – including how the Charlottesville rally, Mar-A-Lago, Roger Stone and others such things play a part in it – but there's still tons left out... popbitch.com/2017/10/the-un…
But keep your eye on the Enquirer covers over the next few weeks. Pecker has put himself in a pretty tricky bind, because he still has to run his magazine. And if he tries to turn the tide of AMI's coverage before his readers are ready for it, it might cost him his business...
Anyhow. The end.
Please do consider reading the full series. It will require you to process a microtransaction through our payment partner @agatehq, who have designed a really simple system to help to make long-form journalism like this sustainable without costly monthly subscriptions, etc.
On a slightly different note, if you want to read our most recent mailout – about Tracey Emin's dirty pants, Lee Ryan's diarrhoea and Hardeep Singh Kohli sticking his dick in a bowl full of cherries, Issue 896 is online now... popbitch.com/emails/bye-bye…
