As Trump mounted his run for office, the alliance appeared to deepen and change. Suddenly, the Enquirer was formally endorsing Trump, and it and other AMI outlets were blaring sycophantic headlines. "DON'T MESS WITH DONALD TRUMP!" one issue of the Globe declared. "HOW TRUMP WILL WIN!" added the Enquirer.
When the Enquirer tallied the "Twisted Secrets of the Candidates!," the tabloid's revelation about Trump was: "he has greater support and popularity than even he's admitted to!" Screaming covers about Hillary Clinton's supposed treachery and flagging health became a mainstay.
"'SOCIOPATH' HILLARY CLINTON'S SECRET PSYCH FILES EXPOSED!" they howled, and "HILLARY: CORRUPT! RACIST! CRIMINAL!" The exclamation points made the headlines look like budget musical titles.
A favorite subplot was Clinton's impending death.
(She miraculously defied the tabloid's prognoses and kept right on almost-dying all the way through the election.) Not long before voters went to the polls, Howard had colleagues pull a stack of the covers for Pecker to present to Trump.#3588•
During the campaign, Trump associates, including Michael Cohen, called Pecker and Howard. A series of covers about Trump's competitor in the Republican primary, Ted Cruz, which chronicled a wild conspiracy theory about Cruz's father being linked to the assassination of JFK, were planted by another Trump associate, the political consultant Roger Stone.
Howard even made contact with Alex Jones, a maniacal radio personality whose conspiracy theories had helped lift Trump's candidacy, and later appeared on Jones's show.
And sometimes, AMI staffers were told not merely to kill unflattering leads about the magazine's favored candidate but to seek out information and lock it up tight in the company's vaults.
"This is fucking nonsense," one of them later told me.
"The operation became like Pravda."#3590•
Chapter 9
Anyone asked to do something risky to expose something important has to balance a complicated mix of self-interested and altruistic incentives. Sometimes, in some stories, the two coincide. But in this story, there was almost no upside. Gutierrez faced legal and professional annihilation. She wanted only to stop Weinstein from doing it again.
"Everyone told me the guy could close all the doors for me," she said.
"I was willing to risk this for the fact that this guy should not have done this to anyone anymore."#3589•