“You Can’t Believe This Happened”: A “Surreal” Trial and Tabloid Tales of Donald Trump
Inside the Hive
Vanity Fair
4.2 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s Inside the Hive with Brian Stelter, Vanity Fair writer Dan Adler and Hollywood Reporter special correspondent Lachlan Cartwright examine Donald Trump’s sordid relationship with David Pecker, the former National Enquirer executive at the center of the ex-president’s criminal hush money trial in Manhattan. Adler and Cartwight, both reporting from inside the courtroom, describe the “surreal” dynamics of this week's proceedings, and reveal how the back-scratching world of tabloid media ended up creating a monster. “You can’t believe this happened. You can’t believe it’s being litigated,” says Adler. “It all still is sort of like, a decade later, a little bit hard to process.”
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Radika Jones, editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. |
| 0:05.0 | If you love digging into the week's political headlines, |
| 0:08.0 | subscribe to Vanity Fair. |
| 0:10.0 | Our reporters take you behind the scenes of some of the biggest stories from the campaign |
| 0:14.9 | trail to the halls of Congress. |
| 0:17.5 | Just for our Inside the Hive listeners, save 15% on a yearly digital subscription to Vanity Fair with promo code |
| 0:24.4 | pod 15 that's vanity fare.com promo code pod 15 for 15% off one year of all you can |
| 0:32.3 | read watch and hear. Vanity Fair. So Lothan, as a former employee, what's it been like seeing the National Inquirers newsroom |
| 0:54.4 | under the national spotlight this week? |
| 0:56.7 | It's been truly surreal, Brian, and it's been a very dark trip down a very dark memory lane. |
| 1:03.0 | That's Laughlin Cartwright, special correspondent for the Hollywood reporter, |
| 1:08.0 | who for years was an editor at the National Inquire's parent company American Media Inc. |
| 1:12.0 | And I'm Brian Stelter, and we welcome you to Parents Parent Company, American Media Inc. |
| 1:13.1 | And I'm Brian Selter. |
| 1:14.4 | Let me welcome you to Inside the Hive. |
| 1:16.9 | This week, we're going inside the tabloid world |
| 1:20.0 | that helped create Donald Trump |
| 1:22.2 | and is now a key part of the hush money cover-up trial. |
| 1:27.0 | In many ways Trump was created and definitely sustained over the decades by tabloids. The National Inquirer may have even played a decisive |
| 1:35.7 | role in helping him win the 2016 election. And all of these details are now spilling |
| 1:41.0 | out in open court for the first time ever. |
| 1:44.3 | Lachlan recently detailed his time at the Inquirer in a cover story for the New York Times |
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