David Pecker, the chief executive of American Media, Inc., owner of the National Enquirer, Star magazine and other supermarket tabloid magazines, is considering a bid to purchase Time, Inc., according to The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin.
Time Inc. includes Time magazine, Fortune, and the "great prize," celebrity magazine People, Toobin wrote.
Pecker focuses on cutting expenses, usually with layoffs, but would keep the Time, Inc. titles in publication, according to The New Yorker. Toobin wrote that Pecker purchasing those magazines would "almost certainly" lead to him focusing them on promoting President Donald Trump.
Pecker and Trump are longtime friends, according to The New Yorker, and the Enquirer promoted Trump in his run for president, with such headlines as "Donald Trump's Revenge on Hillary & Her Puppets," and "Top Secret Plan Inside: How Trump Will Win Debate!" The publication also slammed Trump opponent Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, linking his father to the John F. Kennedy assassination.
"Based on the stewardship of his own publications, Pecker would almost certainly direct those magazines, and the journalists who work for them, to advance the interests of the president and to damage those of his opponents — which makes the story of the Enquirer and its chief executive a little more important and a little less funny," Toobin writes.
The executive told Toobin the tabloid supports Trump because issues that focus on him sell well.
"They voted for Trump," Pecker said, referring to Enquirer readers. "And 96 percent want him re-elected today. That's the correlation. These are white working people, who love to see takedowns of celebrities, and they want to see — which is unusual — who would think these people would love a billionaire? — the billionaire's pulpit."
Trump's popularity hosting the TV show "The Apprentice" carried over, Pecker said in The New Yorker. "They know him from fourteen seasons on 'The Apprentice' as the boss, and they loved it when he fired those people and ridiculed them."
He told Toobin he relayed that compliment to Trump. "I'd say, 'Who cares about governor or mayor, you should be president. They love you. These people love you.'"
Another purchase by Pecker could show how the magazines might change under his leadership, according to The New Yorker.
Earlier in 2016, Pecker bought celebrity magazine Us Weekly from Gus Wenner, heir apparent to Wenner Media. That magazine, which had "largely been a political," according to Toobin, published a profile on Ivanka Trump in an early issue under Pecker's oversight.
While Trump has frequently criticized the mainstream press, calling it the "enemy of the people," he has praised Pecker, calling him "brilliant," according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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