CONCERNS: New York Times merges with Enquirer!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2024

Agamemnon will have to wait: As it turns out, the rage of Achilles—along with the rage of Agamemnon himself—is going to have to wait. 

So too for that one overwhelming human concern—the one concern which lay behind their famous bouts of rage. Can we learn to see ourselves more clearly by reviewing the western world's first great "poem of war?" 

As the trial of Donald J. Trump grinds on, we will have the next several weeks to revisit that Bronze Age war poem.  For today, a journalistic merger has forced its way center stage:

We refer to the way the New York Times has announced its merger with the National Enquirer. More accurately, we refer again to the tabloid-adjacent way the Times is reporting the Gotham trial.

In this morning's print editions, the trial returns to the top right-hand corner of the Times' front page. Reporters Protess and Bromwich are joined by reporters Feuer and Rashbaum in producing the tabloidy news report which appears. in online editions, under this dual headline:

Trump Jurors Hear How Seamy Hush-Money Deals Were Made
Keith Davidson, a lawyer for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, will resume testimony on Thursday.

Those weren't just any "hush-money deals." They were seamy hush-money deals, the Times has now declared! 

Seamy may be as seamy may do! Principal headline included, the news report starts like this:

Trump Jurors Hear How Seamy Hush-Money Deals Were Made

He was the man behind the hush money, the amiable Beverly Hills lawyer who specialized in celebrity dirt—unearthing it, and then, for the right price, burying it forever.

But in 2016, the lawyer, Keith Davidson, was on the verge of something grander than a run-of-the-mill sex tape or affair. He had two clients shopping stories so big they might sway a presidential election: Their names were Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, and they were ready to tell the world about their sexual encounters with Donald J. Trump.

That kind of reporting will draw readers in. That said, we'll start with the type of claim we addressed in yesterday afternoon's post.

According to the quartet of Times reporters, the amiable Attorney Davidson was "shopping [two] stories so big they might sway a presidential election." 

For the record, the lawyer began by seeking an extremely large payday for those stories. According to his testimony, he started by asking for a million dollars, according to CNN and also according to Rubin.

The New York Times left that part out. But those stories must have been very big. They must have been very important!  

In our view, the stories in question may tell us something about ourselves—about our deepest concerns. As we noted yesterday, one of those major stories went exactly like this:

On one occasion in 2006, Donald J. Trump allegedly had (fully consensual) sex with a woman who wasn't his wife!

For the record, Trump says it never happened. The woman in question says it happened exactly once, way back in 2006, in a fully consensual manner.

That's the extremely big story around which the Gotham trial turns. We start with the obvious question:

Could the broadcast of that (unconfirmable) story have changed the shape of the 2016 race?

We'd say it could have changed the race—though in whose favor, we can't necessarily say. But it seems to us that this fact tells us a great deal about us the people—about our concerns, ourselves.

Did Donald J. Trump commit a felony in paying (a fraction of) the very large sum the amiable lawyer had originally sought? 

Everything is possible! But as we noted yesterday, the tortured legalities of this situation aren't our main concern.

We're mainly interested in what this remarkable episode may say about us—about the things we secretly care about, about our most basic concerns.

As with the ten-year siege of Troy, so too here—there seems to be one major concern which lies at the heart of this silly, dumb story. And while we're at it, let's consider what Jonathan Alter has said.

Alter's a very experienced, very capable journalist, and a thoroughly decent person. We even know him tiny tad.  

Way back when, writing for Newsweek, he broke the story about the very strange personal history of Gennifer Flowers, who also wanted to tell a story. As far as we know, the story Flowers told turned out to be almost totally false.

Yesterday afternoon, at this link, Alter filed a short report for the Times about yesterday's testimony at the trial. Was Alter a spectator at the trial? His dispatch doesn't say.

At any rate, Alter's brief report lets us touch on several key points. Headline included, here's one part of what he wrote:

Karen McDougal Almost Went on ABC News, but Then Trump's Team Paid Her

[...]

Much of Davidson’s testimony involved McDougal, whose hush-money deal was a kind of a dress rehearsal for the alleged crime, which is Trump and Cohen covering up the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. For a time, American Media Inc., the owner of The National Enquirer, was in competition with ABC News for McDougal’s story, which led to a memorable moment in court. Davidson claimed a group of women he derided in a text as “the estrogen mafia” wanted her to tell her story to ABC News.

With what crime does Trump charged? Based on the highlighted passage, Alter seems to think that the additional unlawful act Trump was allegedly trying to conceal was the money paid to Stormy Daniels. As we noted yesterday morning, Lisa Rubin thinks the additional crime is the money paid to McDougal.

Meanwhile, the Times published a detailed essay in which Rebecca Roiphe says that the additional unlawful act could be any one of a number of things—and that "we may never learn which crime the jurors believe Trump was seeking to commit or cover up."

Legal analysts on the Fox News Channel routinely describe this undetermined state of affairs as a legal outrage. Due to the "segregation by viewpoint" which now controls "cable news," this claim is never tested by legal analysts from Bue America.

That said, it doesn't sound like a crazy claim. We've now finished Day 9 if this trial and no one seems to be sure concerning the nature of the crime the defendant is charged with!

Continuing directly, Alter wrote this passage. In our view, this helps us become more clear on a very basic point:

“We had it all set. We picked the date, camera crews, makeup,” Brian Ross, the ABC News correspondent, told me this afternoon by phone. “Then she called and said, ‘My family doesn’t want me to do it.’” Ross thinks the real reason this explosive story didn’t come out was that ABC News, which doesn’t pay for stories, became leverage: “In retrospect, they were using us to get to Trump for the money.”

For better or worse, ABC News wanted to report McDougal's story in standard journalistic fashion. According to Brian Ross, the effort fell through for a basic reason:

McDougal could have "told her story" any time she chose. But McDougal didn't want to tell her story. McDougal wanted to tell her story for a large mountain of cash. 

So too with Stormy Daniels. In that sense, Daniels was "silenced" by Trump, or by his associates, in precisely the way she had sought.

Alter also offered the passage shown below. On this morning's Morning Joe, Lisa Rubin confirmed the key part of this passage:

After American Media paid off McDougal, David Pecker, the former publisher, backed out of paying hush money to Stormy Daniels.

But when Davidson demanded the payment, Cohen began offering a million excuses for why Trump couldn’t pay. “I thought he was trying to kick the can down the road until after the election,” Davidson testified, which will be an important part of the prosecution’s case.

When it was clear Trump wouldn’t pay, Davidson testified that Cohen said, “Goddammit, I’ll just do it myself.” It was then that Cohen set up a dummy corporation to send Davidson the money and began trying to get reimbursed by Trump.

All of the texts and phone calls between Davidson and Cohen are still one step removed from Trump. But they pre-corroborate what Cohen will say “the boss” told him to do, and that is critical.

Say what? According to Alter's account, it became clear at one point that Trump wasn't willing to pay Daniels. At that point, Cohen stepped in and said he'd have to do it himself.

This morning, Rubin quoted Davidson quoting Cohen the same way. Does that undermine some of the  story-telling in Blue America surrounding this alleged crime?

McDougal and Daniels came looking for cash, perhaps like Flowers before them. Tabloid outlets like the Times go for this sort of thing all the time—and this sort of thing almost surely leads a nation down a long and winding road which leads to a long, slippery slope.

Tabloid entities simply love "seamy" stories like this! Does this possibly tell us something about the actual state of our own concerns? Does it tell us something about Our Concerns, Ourselves?

The rage of Achilles will have to wait. But how much has human nature changed since the Achaeans sailed to Troy with only one thing on their minds?

Tomorrow: Whatever comes next