Donald Trump's latest feud with the co-hosts of "Morning Joe" has landed the tabloid National Enquirer in hot water after Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski alleged that White House aides threatened to publish a damaging story on the tabloid if they did not apologize to the President. Although Donald Trump denied it in a tweet, it has now emerged that the National Enquirer has close ties with Trump and in fact, his son-in-law had almost bought it back in 2014.
A startling revelation
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski created quite a stir yesterday when they claimed that White House aides contacted them and asked them to apologize to Donald Trump or else the National Enquirer would publish a negative story.
The tabloid has been close to the Trump family for a long time and according to latest reports, the President's son-in-law, jared kushner had been one of the messengers from the White House who had contacted the "Morning Joe" co-hosts and laid down the proposal.
The revelation has certainly created a stir in Washington and it gained more credence when it emerged that Kushner had come close to acquiring the National Enquirer back in 2014. According to people who were close to the developments at the time, Kushner was on the cusp of closing the deal but National Enquirer's poor advertising revenue figures killed it.
Not improbable
Despite the denial by the President on his Twitter feed, it is something that does not look like a completely improbable scenario.
Various factors are at play here and perhaps the most important among those is the fact that National Enquirer had been one of the most vocal supporters of Trump in the lead-up to the Presidential election last year. The publication is primarily involved in scoop news about celebrities but it has published plenty of negative stories about the President's opponents.
The Enquirer had also endorsed Donald Trump prior to the elections and Trump had been so impressed with their journalism that he declared that the tabloid was deserving of a Pulitzer Prize.
Considering the fact that Jared Kushner is one of the President's closest advisors and had been intimately involved in the Trump campaign, the reports about his involvement with the whole episode cannot be dismissed off hand.
Moreover, Kushner or his representatives have refused to comment on these reports. However, National Enquirer's publisher American Media released a statement yesterday in which they denied any White House involvement in the whole affair.