Trump Trials Of The Old And The Tootiful, Part Two

Pecker's back.

Happier times.

There was peening, and there was paying, but the shushing didn’t last!

On our last episode of As The Pecker Turns Tuesday, tabloid grandpa had just taken the stand and whoomped-there-it-is’d that he hadn’t only been catching and killing bimbo-eruption stories for his old pal Donald, but also was letting the campaign have its way with the editorial pages, to push Dying-Hilary-Rubio-Cocaine-Dealer smears against his enemies. 

Since then, Trump’s opened his weird wet little mouth to violate his gag order at least four times, smacktalking about Michael Cohen and sneering that the jury is “95% Democrats.” But he hasn’t said dick about Pecker, other than to call him “a nice guy.” Weird! Nor has he sharted anything about Hopey Hicks, his pants-presser who was in and out of the room during the Trump Tower Triplex Peener Payoff meeting, and on some adultery payment phone calls. What other dirt might be out there? The Daily Beast reports Trump has a new secret legal hushy-slushy fund, so may secrets we may never know. But yesterday gave us some hints!

Pecker confirmed that he paid off Karen McDougal for her story about being the mistress of his nasty horndog friend back in 2015, in exchange for $150,000 and a fitness column. He confirmed that in his catchy-killy meetings with Trump, the lumpy lothario never ever mentioned being worried about his wife or family finding out about what a sleaze he was, that he was only worried about the campaign. Once he was president, the then-spokesladies Hope Hicks and fine Christian Sarah Huckabee Sanders also knew all about those adultery-payment deals, while at the same time they were out making those FAKE NEWS public denials. Not the governor of Arkansas betraying public trust, why, I never! And Pecker admitted he helped cover up stories for Tiger Woods, Rahm and Ari Emmanuel, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Perelman. Also he had a secret company that he used for secret payments.

It’s a lot, let’s dig in!

Court Thursday kicked off with a rewind to 2015, when Karen McDougal was peddling her story and Trump and Michel Cohen were frantic about it. Pecker sent his creepo editor Dylan Howard out to El Lay to meet with McDougal and her scuzzo lawyer Keith Davidson and her story checked out, which made Michael Cohen hyperventilate even more. “He kept on calling me, more anxious each time.”

On a three-way horn with Dylan and Mikey the Fixer, Dylan dished that ABC wanted to buy McDougal’s story and had offered her a slot on “Dancing with the Stars,” and some Mexican company might want to buy it too, but that “McDougal didn't want to be the next Monica Lewinsky.”  (The Enquirer knew a thing or two about that, as a main instigator of making her name a verb.) McDougal “wanted to restart her career. She'd had a cover with us, and Dylan said she'd like to bring the story to us, American Media…I thought, we should buy it.” Just some sweet old guys helping a young lady out!

Pecker soon got a ringading from The Boss himself. “I spoke to Michael, Karen is a nice girl. Is there a Mexican group out there to buy the story for $8 million?” Pecker said no, but that he thought they should buy Karen’s story.

“The defendant called Ms. McDougal a nice girl?” Steinglass asked, incredulously. Seriously, when was the last time you heard Trump call anyone but a third-world dictator “nice”?

Pecker: “Yes. I believe he knew who she was.”

Donald sure did! McDougal’s bone-a-rama with Trump was way more than just furtive one-off humping in a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow. The former preschool teacher from small-town Michigan was “in love” with the rakishly charming senior citizen, and they carried on their canoodlings for at least a year, until her mom guilt-tripped her about the whole him-being-married part. (“What, that old hag?” Donald had said of Karen’s mother.)

Too bad for Donald, though, Karen kept a diary in her loopy girlish handwriting. She documented their first “date” in 2001, which involved being escorted by bodyguard Keith Schiller to a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “I was so nervous!” she wrote. “I was into his intelligence + charm. Such a polite man.” There’s accounting for hush money, but no accounting for taste!

“We talked for a couple hours – then, it was ‘ON’! We got naked + had sex.” As McDougal was getting dressed to leave, “He offered me money. I looked at him (+ felt sad) + said, ‘No thanks - I’m not ‘that girl.’ I slept w/you because I like you - NOT for money’ - He told me ‘you are special.’” 

Guess he’s used to paying for it! So they started hooking up regularly, and Trump paid for her travel so she could lovingly service his peen from coast to coast. You can read all the cringey details in Ronan Farrow’s juicy, disgusting New Yorker report from 2018. “No paper trails for him … every time I flew to meet him, I booked/paid for flight + hotel + he reimbursed me.” So Fani Willis of him!

Skeezer geezer that he is, Trump even brought her to the marital tripled triplex at the Trump Tower Russian Adoption Agency and Hair Weave Emporium, and he pointed out Melania had a separate bedroom because she “liked her space.” I’ll bet! And of course he never used a condom with her or any of his many paramours, bletch bletch bletch, which explains why he’d been asking Bill Gates about HPV.

All it all it wasn’t very presidential, and Cohen told Pecker to buy McDougal’s story, asking, “who’s going to pay?”

“The Boss will take care of it,” Cohen told him.

Terms were discussed, $150,000 for “lifetime rights.” “She also wanted to appear in our magazine,” said Pecker. She had a problem with her breast implants and wanted to write about it in Shape magazine, and to anchor red carpet events for Radar … I told Michael Cohen, ‘Why should I pay? I just paid $30,000 for the doorman story. Who is going to reimburse me $150,000?’ He said, ‘The Boss will take care of it.’”

Well, the boss never did! The Enquirer wired $150k to Karen’s scuzzo lawyer, and of course didn’t report to the FEC. Cohen was going to run a reimbursement to Pecker through some shell companies (of course Pecker had one already set up in Florida just for embarrassing payments), but after talking to a lawyer Pecker ended up pulling out at the last minute and eating the money. So it actually wasn’t Donald being cheap for once, surprise twist!

Asked Steinglass, “Were you concerned about buying a story?”

Pecker: “Yes. I'd bought a story before for Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was buying Flex [magazine], I was told I had to meet Arnold, who said he wanted our tabloids to not run anything against me, he was running for Governor. There were women selling stories about relationships with Arnold, or sexual harassment by him. I would buy them up. But one we didn't buy and she sold it to the LA Times. It was very embarrassing for me. So I became sensitive about buying any stories in the future.”

(Los Angeles Magazine’s deep dive into Arnold’s peener payments, “The Hush-Hush Deal that Made Arnold Schwarzenegger Governor” is interesting, if you are sitting under a hairdryer at the beauty parler and want to read all about it here!)

How illegal did team Enquirer know that it was? Dylan Howard texted to a relative, “At least if he wins I'll be pardoned for electoral fraud.” !! (Unfortunately the jury was out of the room for that one.)

When Stormy Daniels popped up, though, Pecker said he refused to make the peener payment, because AMI was “not a bank,” and also because he didn’t deal in porn stars, a subject matter too ribald for the classy racks of his biggest distributor, Walmart. 

But no hard feelings! Once Trump had wormed his way into the White House, he invited Pecker to a “thank you dinner,” where he gushed "I want to thank you for handling the ‘McDougal situation’ and the ‘doorman situation.’” Putting the b in subtle, there! 

The NDAs kept those cats in the bag until Trump stole the election, but not for long. In November 2016 the Wall Street Journal uncovered the McDougal payments, and Pecker testified that he found himself on the line with Trump, Hope Hicks and that fine Christian Sarah Huckabee Sanders, assuring them he was going to try to amend the shushy contract for another six months. “They said do whatever you need to do.” But cat, bag, out.

Prosecutor: Did there come a time when [Trump bodyguard/toady] Keith Schiller told you that Karen McDougal was going on ABC?

Pecker: Yes. I checked with Dylan Howard who said, It's not true. I told Keith and he said, “The Boss is very pleased.” But then the Journal was calling our spox. Mr. Trump was very mad. He told me we must have been leaking. I said no. It must have been Karen McDougal. But Mr. Trump was agitated. Our call ended abruptly.

Prosecutor: What do you mean?

Pecker: He didn't say goodbye. Which was very rare.

Oh damn, he was MAD MAD!

Prosecutor: Why did you put out a statement that AMI does not pay to kill stories?

Pecker: I wanted to protect my company, and myself, and Donald Trump. I asked Dylan to call Keith Davidson, who said Karen was in Arizona, not taking calls. Karen had another lawyer approach us, asking for the agreement to be amended. I thought it should be, now that the WSJ was out. Then Michael told me he wasn’t reimbursed for Stormy Daniels. Michael told me he didn’t yet get his bonus, he asked me to speak to Donald Trump to help get him his bonus. And I did that: I told Mr. Trump that I believed Michael Cohen would go in front of a bus for me.

Mr. Trump said, “Cohen owes 50 taxi medallions. Michael has apartments in my building, I'll take care of it.”

Then I was invited to Trump Tower. But there was more security than I had ever seen. Jared Kushner saw me and took me upstairs to Mr. Trump's office, or the waiting room. In the waiting room, [Trump bodyguard] Keith Schiller said, How's our girl? Meaning Karen McDougal. Then I was summoned in. Mike Pompeo and others there, telling him about the Fort Lauderdale shooting that day. Mr. Trump introduced me as the head of the National Enquirer. Mr. Trump told them that I knew more than anyone in the room. It was a joke but they didn't get it. They left and Mr. Trump asked me, “How's my girl.” Or, “how's our girl.” He thanked me for the doorman story.

Prosecutor: Meaning what?

Pecker: For buying them.

Prosecutor: Do you think he wanted the stories about for his family, or for the campaign?

Pecker: The campaign. He did not mention his family. So I assumed the campaign. 

Prosecutor: Did he mention what Melania or Ivanka would think?

Pecker: No. He invited me to the inauguration. I asked, “How will we speak?” He said he'd get a phone only for friends. But it never transpired. We left it like that.

Old stiff em and leave em Trump! And soon Pecker was getting calls from the FEC. Cliffhanger! Pecker will be back on the stand today for a fourth day, smelling old man farts and continuing to get cross-examined by Trump lawyers, who got started late Thursday afternoon and tried to imply that Pecker did all of this for his own benefit, somehow, LOL.

Until next episode, lucky blue dots for everyone!

OT, but when Trump left court today, his weave was barely hanging on for dear life.

Sad!

Until next time!

[Daily Beast/WSJ/New Yorker/LA Mag/Quartz]