Trump's Tabloid
By Carl M. Cannon
May 09, 2016
Although he’s a billionaire who hawked expensive filet mignon steaks, Donald Trump’s own food preferences run to McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, Wendy’s hamburgers, and Oreos for desert. He’s also a teetotaler, meaning that a man who can afford to order Dom Pérignon by the case stocks his private jet with Diet Coke. Hey, he’s a man of the people. Who am I to judge? I like a Diet Coke and a Big Mac as much as the next man.
But Trump’s low-brow culinary tastes also apply to his reading habits, and this is more than a matter of personal preference. Apparently, the newspaper of record for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is the National Enquirer. This is a problem.
Astute Trump-watchers had long suspected that The Donald harbored a fetish for supermarket tabloids. Trump confirmed this conjecture last Tuesday, as he was wrapping up the nomination. It was a particularly bad day for Ted Cruz. As the Texas senator was being driven out of the race by losing the Indiana primary, Trump implied that his father was involved with John F. Kennedy’s assassin.
“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald being, you know, shot,” Trump said. “I mean the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this? Right prior to [Kennedy] being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don't even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.”
“Reported,” in this case, is a term of art. The source of this stink bomb was the National Enquirer, which published a grainy photo of an unidentified man standing next to Kennedy’s assassin in August of 1963 in New Orleans. The tabloid identifies the man as Rafael Cruz, apparently based on the fact that they are dark-haired men with similar haircuts. Trump is right that it’s “ridiculous,” albeit not in the way he means.
More at:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/05/09/trumps_tabloid_130505.html
