How David Pecker ‘was in Trump’s pocket’: Donald’s 2016 Republican rivals reveal how ’embellished’ National Enquirer headlines about love children, sex scandals and JFK’s assassination really influenced the race

One by one during the 2016 presidential campaign, headlines in the increasingly political National Enquirer continued to single out Donald Trump’s opponents.

“TED CRUZ FATHER LINKED TO JFK,” read a headline linking Rafael Cruz to Lee Harvey Oswald in the spring of 2016. “BEN CARSON KICKS OFF MY BRAIN!” went another.

For operatives working for Trump’s top Republican rivals, it didn’t take long to figure out what was going on with the normally celebrity-obsessed supermarket tabloid led by longtime Trump friend David Pecker.

“It’s clear that Pecker was in Trump’s pocket. This is what he wanted him to do, and he did it,” said Republican consultant Rick Tyler, who handled communications for Trump rival Ted Cruz.

He recalled the impact of those newspaper covers and did not ignore their impact on the electorate.

“I just remember. I do think that the campaign completely underestimated the impact of those stories. People who are, let’s say, sophisticated will look at the checkouts and think, ‘That’s funny,'” Tyler, co-founder of Foundry Strategies, told DailyMail.com. “Apparently there are a lot of people who buy that stuff and think it’s true,” he said.

He called the impact difficult to measure, even in a publication that sometimes contained bizarre stories that were depicted as farce.

Tyler called another cover story, about a “Ted Cruz sex scandal” in which he alleged Cruz had multiple affairs, “hysterically funny.” “If you knew Cruz at all, the idea that he had affairs with six women was ambiguous. Heartbreakingly funny,” he said.

But for agents directing the ultimately ill-fated efforts to take on the dominant celebrity Trump, the repeated entry turned heads.

“We were obviously not aware that Trump was coordinating directly with the publisher of the Enquirer,” said Republican consultant Alex Conant, who handled communications for Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign. “But the Enquirer clearly had a lot of pro-Tump coverage,” the Firehouse Strategies founder told DailyMail.com.

Campaign headlines about Rubio mentioned a “love child” and “cocaine connection.” But according to Pecker’s testimony, the hits came at specific times, and at the direction of Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who was part of a secret “deal” over campaign reporting.

“My conversations with Michael Cohen, Michael Cohen called me and said – he said, we would like you to publish a negative article about, let’s say, for the sake of argument, about Ted Cruz. Then he sent me – he was Michael Cohen – information about Ted Cruz or about Ben Carson or about Marco Rubio. That was the basis of our story, and we would embellish it from there,” Pecker said.

“Not interested in revisiting ancient history,” said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, on a day when David Pecker delivered stunning testimony about a “deal” with Trump to suppress negative stories and go after Trump rivals in the National Enquirer. Headlines linked his father to JFK’s assassination and claimed he had “five secret mistresses.”

The newspaper published reports claiming that Cruz was doing business. He angrily denied the claims at the time

Another story involved a patient’s complaint about former presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson

Pecker testified that the Enquirer ran negative headlines about Trump rivals when they were gaining in the polls

Prosecutors introduced into evidence footage of Pecker visiting Trump at the White House after he won the White House in 2017

He said the stories took place “after the Republican debates, and based on the success of some of the other candidates, I would get a call from Michael Cohen and he would point out to me and (editor) Dylan Howard which candidate and which direction we would choose. should go. That’s how the process went.’

The stories may have provoked laughter, but they also had an impact.

The Cruz JFK story was “obviously fake,” Conant said. ‘But still something that Cruz had to contend with. It was a distraction for Cruz’s campaign.

Cruz himself was not interested in revisiting the story that enraged him during the campaign. “Not interested in revisiting ancient history,” he told reporters at the Capitol this week.

Pecker also saw headlines from Enquirer stories about Ben Carson, who battled Trump for Evengelical support based on his dramatic story of overcoming life obstacles.

“Clumsy surgeon Ben Carson left a sponge in patient’s brain,” read one.

GOP consultant Rick Tyler said campaigns could sense a similarity with Pecker

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo had Pecker acknowledge that Carson was “gaining popularity in the polls” at the time of the hits.

“Were these headlines consistent with your meeting at Trump Tower in 2015?” he followed up. “Yes,” Pecker replied.

Those attacks came at a time when Carson, who later made peace with Trump and became HUD secretary, posed a threat.

“If Trump enters the race, he is the dominant figure and no one is beating him in any national poll,” Tyler said. “What he was behind was in Iowa and he was behind Carson. And then he went after Carson,” he said.

Trump found ways to amplify attacks on his biography that appeared in the Enquirer, dramatically reenacting Carson’s awakening story in which, as an angry youth, he tried to stab someone but was stopped by a belt buckle in Iowa. He also called him a “pathological liar” and compared him to him

“He pretty much sent them all in order,” Tyler said of Trump. Rubio made a ‘classic mistake’.

“Obviously the Enquirer had a lot of pro-Tump coverage,” said consultant Alex Conant, who worked for Marco Rubio’s campaign.

‘He decided to go out for five days Trump Trump. And he made a fool of himself,” he said.

Cruz chose to fight back after the Enquirer wrote a piece accusing him of having five affairs.

Cruz lashes out at Trump over the Heidi thing. You just didn’t feel it,” he said.

The most egregious reports that the Enquirer was carrying water for Trump came in glowing headlines about him.

‘Donald Trump: the man behind the legend’ was one. “Donald Trump: Healthiest Individual Ever Elected,” read another article, echoing the exaggerated assessment of his longtime personal physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein.

Newspaper headlines about his 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton were merciless. ‘Hillary: six months to live!’ said one, subtitled that she had brain cancer. ‘HILLARY FRAMED TRUMP FAMILY!’ said another.

Pecker said that Hillary was running for president and that “Bill Clinton’s womanizing was the biggest, one of the biggest sells that I had for the National Enquirer and the other tabloids.”

He called it a “mutual benefit.” It would help his campaign; it would help me too.’ He focused on Hillary as an enabler of Bill’s womanizing, he said.

When asked how Trump felt about the reporting, Pecker replied: “He was satisfied.”

In a diverted investigation by Trump’s lawyers Friday, he admitted that the newspaper had already gone after the Clintons before the secret deal he described with Trump.

Another former Trump rival, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), was stunned by the new details of the 2016 machinations that helped Trump take over the Republican Party. “I don’t know anything about it,” he told DailyMail.com when asked about the Pecker bombs from the trial. “I haven’t paid any attention to it at all – I think the whole process is a load of nonsense,” he added.