Trump has strong links to National Enquirer and David Pecker #TrumpLovesPecker

Donald Trump with some of his supporters
Donald Trump with some of his supporters

I’m just going to go through a few links so that we get the complete picture of the connection between Donald Trump and his good friend David Pecker, and Pecker’s trashy tabloid publication.

This article from the New York Daily News is from August 2015.

It says:

Former Donald Trump allies like Fox News and NBC have been taking shots at the presidential hopeful since his bid began — but he has at least one staunch media ally.

Industry insiders tell us Trump is “very close” with David Pecker, head of The National Enquirer and CEO and chairman of American Media, which means the outlet is unlikely to dig too deeply into his personal life as he campaigns.

[…]“Trump is a big friend of Pecker,” says our insider.

[…]Our source says that with Trump “protected” by the tabloid, “Some of the staff are furious. Trump’s such fertile ground, and it drives them crazy to not only be staying away from it, but running puff pieces for him.”

Trump and Pecker have certainly been known to scratch each other’s backs.

This week’s Enquirer features a piece under the screaming red banner: “Charismatic billionaire Donald Trump writes exclusively for the Enquirer.” In the column, entitled “America is being laughed at … and things must change!” Trump outlines his qualifications for the White House, including the fact that in his view, wife Melania “would make a terrific first lady!”

In 2010, Trump tweeted, “David Pecker would be a brilliant choice as CEO of TIME Magazine — nobody could bring it back like David!”

New York Magazine also notes the connection between Trump and David Pecker of the National Enquirer, in an article from October 2015, when Carson and Trump were fighting for the lead i the GOP primary.

Excerpt:

[…][A]s Carson overtakes Trump as the GOP front-runner, it appears Trump is getting help from a media outlet known for ending presidential candidacies: the National Enquirer. Earlier this month, the Enquirer published a cover story on Carson headlined “Bungling Surgeon Ben Carson Left Sponge in Patient’s Brain!” The article called Carson a “White House wannabe” and claimed he “brandished a scalpel like a meat cleaver!” It went on to quote angry former patients saying he botched surgeries that left them disfigured and in pain; one patient who sued Carson said he forgot to remove a surgical sponge from her brain after a procedure. “His presidential campaign should be dead on arrival!” Enquirer reporter Sharon Churcher wrote.

[…][Their source] also said that Trump’s campaign was a source for the article: “His campaign provided information that was used,” he explained. A Trump friend said that in the days leading up to the article’s publication Trump was telling people that Carson “had a lot of medical malpractice suits” and “almost killed a guy.”

[…]Whether or not Trump has been a source for the Enquirer, his friendship with Pecker has paid dividends. At key moments during the GOP primary the Enquirer has helped boost Trump’s campaign by attacking his rivals and fawning over him. Two weeks after Trump launched his campaign in mid-June, the Enquirer reported that Jeb Bush was “involved in the drug trade in Florida” in the ’80s and that, as governor, he was plagued by “sleazy cheating scandals … [with a] Playboy Bunny turned lawyer.” In September, the Enquirer published an unflattering photograph of Bush’s adult daughter apparently taking cigarette breaks at her office. The article hit just days after Jeb told Americans they needed to work longer hours.

Carly Fiorina has also been slimed. After the former Hewlett-Packard CEO bested Trump at the second GOP debate last month, the Enquirer ran an article headlined “Homewrecker Carly Fiorina Lied About Druggie Daughter.” The article attacked one of Fiorina’s best moments at the debate: her emotional account of her daughter’s struggle with drug addiction. “The National Enquirer has exclusively learned that Lori Ann Fiorina, who died in October 2009, was in fact Carly’s stepdaughter,” the tabloid reported. “She was brought up not by Carly but by her biological mom, Patricia Fiorina, whose marriage allegedly was wrecked by the 61-year-old White House hopeful who is determined to knock Donald Trump from his superior front-runner status!”

[…]Meanwhile, Trump has been exclusively celebrated in the Enquirer’s pages. As talk of a Trump candidacy heated up last winter, the tabloid published an article headlined “Trump’s the One!” that reported him leading in the polls. In September, the Enquirer published a three-part series by Trump himself under the headline “The Man Behind the Legend!”

Trump’s scandal-filled personal life would be yuge! for the supermarket tabloid, but to the Enquirer, it seems, friendship is forever.

They certainly are very good friends.

National Enquirer: "Trump Must Be President", and Rubio has sex and drug secrets
National Enquirer: “Trump Must Be President!”, and Rubio has sex & drug secrets

 The Daily Beast notes that Trump has also been endorsed by the National Enquirer.

Excerpt:

The full endorsement… includes a list of “10 reasons The Donald is the ONLY choice for the White House.”

[…]Along with conservative website Breitbart, the Enquirer often reads like a political ally of Team Trump. And if it sounds like that endorsement was authored by Trump’s friends, that is because, well, it sort of was.

[…]Meanwhile, Trump’s other political enemies, such as Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz (called “Boozin’ Ted” by the tabloid), and Jeb Bush have been absolutely savaged in the pages of the Enquirer. The supermarket tabloid reported that Bush, as governor of Florida, was embroiled in “sleazy cheating scandals…[with a] Playboy Bunny turned lawyer,” a rumor Bush had publicly denied over a decade ago.

[…]The unvarnished look at, say, Rubio has consisted of the Florida senator’s alleged past attendance at “gay [foam] parties” (the “Rubio is gay!” conspiracy theory is emerging asthe next big meme within certain pro-Trump and far-right communities), and a story on “NERDY” Marco Rubio’s “SEX & DRUG SECRETS.” The latter ran directly to the right of the publication’s recent endorsement of The Donald (pictured above).

[…]Trump became a National Enquirer contributor in August, writing an op-ed on his greatness. (It would not be the last time the Enquirer would bear his byline.)

Trump writes articles for the National Enquirer? Hmmmn. I wonder if he writes anonymous articles for the National Enquirer that insinuate nasty things about Ted Cruz, but have no evidence or statements from witnesses.

And along came a smear

I ask that because there is a National Enquirer story out now that smears Ted Cruz.

Here is Ted Cruz’s response to the National Enquirer story:

Everyone has to decide who to believe on their own.

Ron Fournier and Chuck Todd

I was surprised to see this tweet from Ron Fournier, who is a person on the far left who gets respect from conservatives like me:

Ron Fournier of National Journal re-tweets Chuch Todd and says "Bravo"
Ron Fournier of National Journal re-tweets Chuch Todd and says “Bravo”

Here is the link to Chuck Todd’s comments: (link has the video)

Yesterday on Meet The Press Chuck Todd pointed out that Trump used an LBJ tactic of suggesting he hoped the National Enquirer story wasn’t true while trying to fan the flames of the smear.

But Todd says there’s simply more evidence that ties Trump to planting the story in the National Enquirer than there is to the story itself tying anything to Cruz…

Andrea Mitchell emphasized how close Trump’s relationship is with the National Enquirer, pointing out that they’ve even endorsed him.

When you have MSNBC saying that the story’s claims are less credible than the claim that Donald Trump deliberately planted the story in the National Enquierer, thanks to his good friend David Pecker, then you know the story is suspect. No one in the mainstream media has confirmed it, because there is no confirmation for it.

Michael Savage

The National Enquirer story so ridiculous that one of Trump’s biggest supporters – national radio show host Michael Savage – has threatened to yank his endorsement of Trump.

The Right Scoop has the transcript and audio.

Transcript:

Michael Savage said today on his radio show that the National Enquirer story smearing Ted Cruz is completely false, and he knows this based on a source he says he would trust with his life. Savage points out that Cruz is rightly offended over this utter garbage.

But even more so, Savage says that he abhors these attempts of assassination by innuendo, as it has been done to him, and while he doesn’t blame Trump for the story, he threatens to withdraw his support of Trump if he doesn’t completely disavow the story and the man who owns the National Enquirer, David Pecker.

Now that Ted Cruz is gaining in the polls, I have to wonder about any National Enquirer articles that attempt to smear Cruz the same way that previous articles smeared Rubio, Bush, Carson, Fiorina, etc. Seems to me that Trump might be able to recover his lead if he could convince his good friend David Pecker to let him write an article about Ted Cruz – one with no evidence and no named witnesses. It might work to convince Trump’s supporters to return to him so that he doesn’t lose the primary to a surging Ted Cruz.

Against misogyny: why every conservative should #DumpTrump #NeverTrump

Heidi Cruz, a beautiful, intelligent, hard-working, successful woman
Heidi Cruz, a beautiful, intelligent, hard-working, successful woman

So, last week early Thursday morning, Donald Trump tweeted out a picture of his wife juxtaposed with a picture of Heidi Cruz that made her look very ugly.

In this post, I want to respond to Trump’s attack on Heidi, and urge Trump supporters to reconsider their support for Trump.

All about Heidi Cruz

Consider this Texas Tribune article about Heidi Cruz.

It says:

[Heidi] Cruz, 43, grew up in San Luis Obispo, Calif., the daughter of a dentist and dental hygienist who are Seventh-day Adventists.

[…]Cruz went to Claremont McKenna College and was active in the college Republicans and interested in appointive political office, said her mentor, Edward Haley. She also was intent on a career in business first. She moved to New York after graduation and worked on emerging markets at J.P. Morgan, an area in which she was interested after spending summers in Africa doing missionary work with her parents. She was put on the Latin America desk and taught herself to speak Spanish between 18-hour work days.

Cruz achieved her dream of attending Harvard Business School but turned down a job at Goldman Sachs to work on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign.

She later met and married Ted Cruz, and she has now put her career on hold to help her husband run for President.

More:

She now holds her own campaign events, talking up her husband’s values and laying out what the campaign sees as a grass-roots path to victory.

[…]She remains the campaign’s top fundraiser, now making many calls from the road instead of from the campaign’s airy Houston headquarters, where she installed a playroom with pillows decorated with raspberry prints for the girls. Cruz said she aims to make 30 calls a day but typically averages about 20 to 25; she is calling from the campaign and super PAC lists and trying to persuade donors to give the maximum allowed under federal election law.

“I don’t want to say it’s easy, and I don’t close every deal,” she said. “I think people want to be a part of something that addresses the main issue of the day, number one, which is Washington versus the people.”

[…]Ted Cruz told an audience in Winterset, Iowa, on Monday that the couple’s decision to run for president was difficult for his wife.

“Heidi spent a lot of years building a very, very successful career. And when we were deciding whether to run, particularly when you’re parents of young girls, that’s not an easy decision. And she was struggling with it,” he said.

Ted Cruz said his wife was driving, listening to a CD of Christian music sent by her sister-in-law. She was struck by a song about seeking the face of the Lord and pulled over on the freeway and started crying, he said. That moment, he said, “changed her heart,” and she decided that the race was about God, the country and the future.

Now, Heidi Cruz says her main job is to bolster her husband’s candidacy.

“There are women who use their husband’s candidacies for their own” purposes, she said recently while being driven to yet another airport. “I love my life. I love my career. This is not for me. This is for our country.”

Here is one more quote from a 2013 article on Heidi Cruz, from the radically leftist New York Times, of all places:

In a glimpse into their marriage that Mr. Cruz called “illustrative,” he recalled saying to his wife in the weeks before his Senate primary, when he was still behind in the polls, “Sweetheart, I’d like us to liquidate our entire net worth, liquid net worth, and put it into the campaign.”

“What astonished me, then and now, was Heidi within 60 seconds said, ‘Absolutely,’ with no hesitation,” said Mr. Cruz, who invested about $1.2 million — “which is all we had saved,” he added — into his campaign.

Here she is going door to door in New Hampshire in the winter:

Heidi Cruz waits for a New Hampshire voter to answer the door
Heidi Cruz waits for a New Hampshire voter to answer the door

The description of the photo by the person who posted it says:

Here’s a photo from the campaign trail that I’ve never shared. This is Heidi Cruz waiting in the cold to talk to a New Hampshire voter. She did this campaign work with me and three other kids. It was unglamorous: no media, no crowds, just a woman canvassing a neighborhood with a couple volunteers, trying to find someone to talk to about why she believed in her husband. Kind, genuine, humble: when the cameras she knows about are off, this is who Heidi Cruz is.

That’s a great wife.

Donald Trump’s attack on Heidi Cruz

It’s a shame that Donald Trump misses all the great things that Heidi has done and attacks her for her appearance. But this is what he values most in women, and this is why he keeps committing adultery on his wives as they age, and then divorcing them to trade them in for younger women. He thinks that a woman’s value is all in her appearance, so he thinks that Heidi is a loser.

Ted Cruz wasn’t born rich. He has had to work his way up to get where he is. Ted knows the value of a woman as a helper, so when it came time to get married, Ted chose the best helper he could find to help him do the big things that he wanted to do. Donald Trump inherited millions and millions of dollars. When it came time for him to choose a wife, he chose supermodel after supermodel. He has no idea what most wives really do to help their husbands, he doesn’t need the help of a woman, which is why he doesn’t value them as women.

Look at what he says:

“You know, it doesn’t really matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of *ss.”

“You have to treat [women] like sh*t.”

“A person who is very flat-chested is very hard to be a 10. Oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world, I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, ‘Can you believe what I am getting?’”

The “top women” are the ones who are “10s”. And what do you do with these women? You have sex with them. You don’t commit to loving and serving a woman for life. You just use them, and throw them away. That’s his view of women. That’s his record.

Mona Charen wrote in defense of Heidi Cruz in National Review.

She says:

Heidi Cruz happens to be an attractive woman, but that’s beside the point. Trump is such a shallow, low human being that he cannot get beyond judging others on their appearance. Basic decent manners forbid commenting on others looks except in the mildest way. “What a lovely dress!” or “That color suits you.” Polite people remember to see others in full — as professionals, wives, mothers, sisters, volunteers, patients, teachers and so forth. Trump is obsessed with people’s looks. He has disdained countless formidable and impressive women for their looks (remember what he said about Carly Fiorina?), and even when searching for kind things to say about his late brother, he lingered quite a while on how handsome he was. At a meeting with the editorial board of the Washington Post, after being asked about using tactical nuclear weapons against ISIS, Trump offered that “this is pretty great looking group.” As with other Trump traits, this is disturbing.

When I first saw Trump’s tweet comparing Heidi Cruz against Trump’s third wife, my first response was to immediately unfriend all of the Trump supporting “friends” on Facebook. That’s how much I hate this idea that a woman has no value unless she is young and beautiful. For some reason, I regard this blindness / dismissiveness about the value of women as complementary to men as misogyny. I think deep down, there is something in me that recognizes that a man’s job is to give a woman security. And what security can a man give a woman when she knows that her value to him is all tied up in her youth and beauty? Trump is an adulterer. He divorced his two wives when they lost their youth and beauty, and he re-married younger women who had better appearances. But what security is there for a woman in a man who sees her contribution to the marriage as youth and beauty? I don’t want Trump’s example to become widespread.

Youth and beauty cannot last – women know that. If we as a society decide to communicate Trump’s message to women, that they only have value if they are young and beautiful, it creates a situation where women will disengage from marriage, because they know they will be abandoned. Trump’s attack on Heidi Cruz is especially devastating in communicating that message. What he is really saying is that women just need to look hot and be good at sex. He is saying that they don’t need to go to school, they don’t need to work hard, they don’t need to save money. These are all the things that Heidi did in order to make a difference, and to be a good helper to her husband.

The more that women get their idea of value from born-rich promiscuous womanizers like Donald Trump, the more women will be depressed that they cannot give anything to a man that will make him stick around. We need to be teaching women how much value they have as supporters, listeners, nurturers and teachers in the home. We need to be teaching men that women who understand male nature and know how to use their feminine gifts remain valuable through changes in age and appearance. Men have a deep need for women as companions. Ted Cruz chose Heidi Cruz because she had the knowledge, wisdom and character to be a suitable companion and confidante for him. We need to be celebrating women like Heidi Cruz, not attacking them for their looks.

N.T. Wright lectures on the seven mutations caused by resurrection of Jesus

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: let's take a look at the facts
Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: let’s take a look at the facts

Here’s a lecture from N.T. Wright, whose multi-volume case for the historicity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus seems to be getting a lot of respect from the other side, (although I strongly disagree with his economic and political views, which are naive at best). Wright has taught at Cambridge University, Oxford University, Duke University, McGill University, and lectured on dozens of prestigious campuses around the world. He’s published 40 books.

Here’s a video of his case for the resurrection:

You can read a written version of the lecture here.

N.T. Wright’s historical case for the bodily resurrection of Jesus

Wright basically argues that the resurrection cannot have been a myth invented by the early Christian community, because the idea of the Messiah dying and being bodily resurrected to eternal life was completely unexpected in Jewish theology, and therefore would not have been fabricated.

In Judaism, when people die, they stay dead. At the most, they might re-appear as apparitions, or be resuscitated to life for a while, but then die again later. There was no concept of the bodily resurrection to eternal life of a single person, especially of the Messiah, prior to the general resurrection of all the righteous dead on judgment day.

Wright’s case for the resurrection has 3 parts:

  • The Jewish theological beliefs of the early Christian community underwent 7 mutations that are inexplicable apart from the bodily resurrection of Jesus
  • The empty tomb
  • The post-mortem appearances of Jesus to individuals and groups, friends and foes

Here’s the outline of Wright’s case:

…the foundation of my argument for what happened at Easter is the reflection that this Jewish hope has undergone remarkable modifications or mutations within early Christianity, which can be plotted consistently right across the first two centuries. And these mutations are so striking, in an area of human experience where societies tend to be very conservative, that they force the historian… to ask, Why did they occur?

The mutations occur within a strictly Jewish context. The early Christians held firmly, like most of their Jewish contemporaries, to a two-step belief about the future: first, death and whatever lies immediately beyond; second, a new bodily existence in a newly remade world. ‘Resurrection’ is not a fancy word for ‘life after death’; it denotes life after ‘life after death’.

And here are the 7 mutations:

  1. Christian theology of the afterlife mutates from multiples views (Judaism) to a single view: resurrection (Christianity). When you die, your soul goes off to wait in Sheol. On judgment day, the righteous dead get new resurrection bodies, identical to Jesus’ resurrection body.
  2. The relative importance of the doctrine of resurrection changes from being peripheral (Judaism) to central (Christianity).
  3. The idea of what the resurrection would be like goes from multiple views (Judaism) to a single view: an incorruptible, spiritually-oriented body composed of the material of the previous corruptible body (Christianity).
  4. The timing of the resurrection changes from judgment day (Judaism) to a split between the resurrection of the Messiah right now and the resurrection of the rest of the righteous on judgment day (Christianity).
  5. There is a new view of eschatology as collaboration with God to transform the world.
  6. There is a new metaphorical concept of resurrection, referred to as being “born-again”.
  7. There is a new association of the concept of resurrection to the Messiah. (The Messiah was not even supposed to die, and he certainly wasn’t supposed to rise again from the dead in a resurrected body!)

There are also other historical puzzles that are solved by postulating a bodily resurrection of Jesus.

  1. Jewish people thought that the Messiah was not supposed to die. Although there were lots of (warrior) Messiahs running around at the time, whenever they got killed, their followers would abandon them. Why didn’t Jesus’ followers abandon him when he died?
  2. If the early Christian church wanted to communicate that Jesus was special, despite his shameful death on the cross, they would have made up a story using the existing Jewish concept of exaltation. Applying the concept of bodily resurrection to a dead Messiah would be a radical departure from Jewish theology, when an invented exaltation was already available to do the job.
  3. The early church became extremely reckless about sickness and death, taking care of people with communicable diseases and testifying about their faith in the face of torture and execution. Why did they scorn sickness and death?
  4. The gospels, especially Mark, do not contain any embellishments and “theology historicized”. If they were made-up, there would have been events that had some connection to theological concepts. But the narratives are instead bare-bones: “Guy dies public death. People encounter same guy alive later.” Plain vanilla narrative.
  5. The story of the women who were the first witnesses to the empty tomb cannot have been invented, because the testimony of women was inadmissible under almost all circumstances at that time. If the story were invented, they would have invented male discoverers of the tomb. Female discovers would have hampered conversion efforts.
  6. There are almost no legendary embellishments in the gospels, while there are plenty in the later gnostic forgeries. No crowds of singing angels, no talking crosses, and no booming voices from the clouds.
  7. There is no mention of the future hope of the general resurrection, which I guess they thought was imminent anyway.

To conclude, Wright makes the argument that the best explanation of all of these changes in theology and practice is that God raised Jesus (bodily) from the dead. There is simply no way that this community would have made up the single resurrection of the Messiah – who wasn’t even supposed to die – and then put themselves on the line for that belief.

And remember, the belief in a resurrected Jesus was something that the earliest witnesses could really assess, because they were the ones who saw him killed and then walking around again after his death. They were able to confirm or deny their belief in the resurrection of Jesus based on their own personal experiences with the object of those beliefs.