There have been a lot of pecker jokes going around with David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer, testifying in the Trump hush-money trial. But I got over all the penis jokes in 2018 when it was first revealed that the National Enquirer was engaging in what they called catch-and-kill journalism.

I use the word “journalism” in jest here as the National Enquirer is about as much of a legitimate newspaper as Laura Loomer is a journalist.

You may not recall, but this was a big story in 2018 that I chronicled in August of that year with a cartoon and blog. The cartoon is similar to this one but updated.

In 2018, I wrote: The gossip rag National Enquirer was supportive of Donald Trump during the 2016 election. They ran frontpage headlines praising Trump and bashing his opponents. They accused Ted Cruz’s father of having something to do with the assassination of JFK. They ran multiple front pages on Hillary Clinton, claiming she was going to jail, only had six months to live, had brain cancer, was an alcoholic, had a lesbian lover, had a massive weight gain, and that she had framed the Trump family.

The Weekly World News headline about Bill Clinton hiring a three-breasted intern was more believable than anything the Enquirer published about Hillary.

The Enquirer also collected dirt on Trump. They investigated multiple stories of Trump’s infidelity…and proceeded to bury each. They enacted a program called “catch and kill,” which was to sign exclusive rights to a story and then bury it. That way, the person claiming they slept with Trump couldn’t tell their story to another publication.

This kind of “journalism” won high praise from Trump, who labels most of the media “fake news.” He said the Enquirer’s publisher, David Pecker, should be in charge of The New York Times and that the Enquirer should have won a Pulitzer Prize. Meanwhile, Pecker was storing all the Trump info in a safe.

After Trump won the election, Pecker became fearful having all the stories in the safe was a liability, so he moved them.To where we don’t know. But, since he, like Weaselburger, was implicated in a Cohen recording…wait for it…Pecker has flipped. Pecker has struck an immunity deal in the Trump inquiry.

What we learned now is that Pecker coordinated this with Donald Trump and Michael Cohen. It was supposed to be a symbiotic relationship that helped the 2016 Trump Campaign and the National Enquirer. The rag would benefit by publishing stories about Hillary Clinton, as that was one of their most popular topics, and would sell large numbers of copies. But I’m not sure how it helped the Enquirer by killing juicy stories about Trump’s trysts.

Pecker also revealed that he’d run stories by Michael Cohen before publishing, particularly ones damaging Trump’s political opponents.

During Pecker’s testimony, he talked about how the stories of the affairs worried Trump that they would hurt his campaign. Pecker never mentioned if Trump was concerned about his wife and children hearing the stories.

The readers of the National Enquirer are the kind of people who vote for a scumbag like Donald Trump.

Real news outlets don’t purchase stories. Real news outlets don’t push stories to help one candidate and to hurt others. Real news outlets don’t coordinate with a campaign. Real news outlets don’t get approval from campaigns before publishing a story. Real news outlets don’t engage in catch-and-kill journalism.

They’re no longer friends, but Trump and Pecker were besties for decades because they’re both lying slimeballs.

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Visit Clay Jones’ website and email him at [email protected].