Ola!

Audio Cup. Good morning and happy Friday ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Defiant

Podcast. Thank you for joining me. I'm your host

Mejeed Padellen aka Brooklyn Dad Defiant. Monday marked the official start of the Trump-Hush Money trial and with that the

prosecution's first official witness David Pecker. Now sit back for a moment folks and get comfortable because it's story time.

Today it's all about Peckers or rather a Pecker named pecker.

Editors rejoice when seeing this man's name and print for the sole reason that they can write headlines like,

pecker rises, pecker exposed, or as the Daily prizes, Pekker exposed.

Or as the Daily Beast noted in Wednesday's coverage of the trial,

Pekker deflates.

Beyond that, his company, American Media, was hardly a bastion of journalistic excellence.

Rather, it was the kind of place you went while waiting for your career to die, a chop shop, the magazine equivalent of Stratton Oakmont

from the Wolf of Wall Street. My friends in the industry called it Men's Warehouse for

the prevalence of middle-aged white guys from Long Island

marching around in ill-fitting suits and bad golf shirts.

All of them served at the feet of Pekker, the company's Pasha, who over the years became a tabloid

staple in his own right.

With his lacquered hair and porn star mustache, he played the role of magazine Kingpin, holding court in New York's

tiniest restaurants. He was a Page 6 staple. In his earlier days, the former accountant launched the ill-fated George magazine with JFK Jr.

But it was at American media where he built his highly leveraged and debt-ridden empire upon a heap of tabloid trash,

manufacturing fake news and engaging in, as he described on the witness stand, checkbook journalism.

If there was ever a person literally made for Donald Trump, it was David Pecker.

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