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Episode Date: February 8, 2019

Jeff Bezos. Donald Trump. The Washington Post. The National Enquirer. This dick pic is not like the others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm not sure how many people have purchased your toothbrush, but over a million people have purchased the Quip electric toothbrush. It's certified platinum across the country. It's available at getquip.com slash explained, G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash E-X-P-L-A-I-N-E-T. It starts at $25 and your first set of refills is F-R-E-E. Peter Kafka, your executive editor of Recode, host of the Recode Media Podcast. Jeff Bezos kind of broke the internet last night with a blog post. Why is his blog post so much more than a blog post? You don't usually have the world's richest man writing about his dick pic, but that's what happened last night.

He also accused the National Enquirer of trying to extort him with that dick pic photo. It's fun to say dick pic on the air. And also there's a Donald Trump element. So that will break the internet for you. You can find those elements. That'll do it. So there's a lot of elements to this blog post. Where does one begin? If you want to go all the way back, I guess you go back to January when Jeff Bezos announced via Twitter that he was divorcing his wife of many decades. That's followed by a National Enquirer story saying, hey, Jeff Bezos has had a long-running affair.

For its current cover story that hit newsstands today, the tabloids seemingly spared no expenses to expose what they say is Bezos's extramarital affair with Lauren Sanchez. We have photos, we have texts. Here's a lot of them. That story blew up for a couple days. Tabloid claims it tracked him across five states and over 40,000 miles. According to the Inquirer, Bezos' lawyer told the publication that it was widely known that he and his wife had been long separated. The texts are the kind of texts you send someone you're having an affair with, which are mildly embarrassing, but it makes it clear they're having an affair.

The inquirer in his reporting says, we have photos, by the way, and some of them are so racy we can't show you them, which at the time everyone sort of ignored and now is much more relevant. Yeah, this story kind of like receded into the background. But I guess we all should have taken note that like you probably don't want to fuck with the richest man in the world in quite this way, right? It's pretty interesting. And on the other hand, you might say if you're the richest man in the world, you know, one rule you learn early on is you don't fight with the press. And especially if this is an affair and this is embarrassing to you, just sort of hope it all sort of goes away. And I think that's what all people thought was going to happen.

Cut to a week or two ago, we start seeing stories first in The Daily Beast and then The Washington Post saying Jeff Bezos, through his private security guy, is pursuing possible reasons why this story would have gotten out and suggesting that Donald Trump is somehow involved in this, which is something that a lot of us thought initially right away, oh, the National Enquirer is linked to Donald Trump. Maybe this is a hit job. The Enquirer said, no, no, no, no, this isn't Trump related. We went after this story because it's about the world's richest man having an affair, which, by the way, is perfectly logical argument. The Inquirer doesn't have a lot of credibility. We can discuss that.

But that seemed fairly reasonable enough. At this point, we know that Jeff Bezos isn't going to let this go. He's hired an investigator to look into it. Who's this guy that he hired? This is his in-house guy, Gavin DeBecker. Other famous people use him. He is running an investigation and telling the press he's running an investigation, trying to figure out how this stuff got out to the National Enquirer, which seems both, again, both reasonable and conspiratorial because the people you would start with are Jeff Bezos and the woman he's having an affair with. And in most cases, you would expect that the investigation will end up concluding

that one of them sent those photos to someone they shouldn't have, and that's how they got out. But this private investigator is telling people, including the Daily Beast and eventually the Washington Post, which Jeff Bezos owns, you see how this gets twisty, that he is considering the idea that maybe someone Trump related is involved. Maybe Roger Stone is involved. It gets quite complicated and sort of hard to believe and overly conspiratorial, except that maybe there's some truth to it. Right. And I guess hiring a P.I. to investigate the National Enquirer sounds kind of like using the National Enquirer's tactics against it. How does the National Enquirer respond to that?

I can't remember if they said anything publicly, but their line has been, this is a great story. We went after it. We went after it because it's a great story. I think it was telling that Dylan Howard, who runs the National Enquirer, he's chief content officer for American media. He was one of the bylines on the Jeff Bezos story. That's the equivalent of Marty Baron running his byline on a giant Washington Post story. Marty Baron is the editor of the Washington Post. That's kind of extraordinary. It is a sign that the Enquirer takes this very seriously or is very proud of the story.

So then, of course, last night Jeff Bezos posts this blog post in response to these threats he's receiving that the National Enquirer is going to post a dick pic and other pics of him, you know, in his boxer briefs or something like that. What does Bezos exactly say in his blog post on Medium? So Bezos says, look, I've been extorted. The Enquirer, its parent company, American Media, run by David Pecker, have been trying to extort me. What they want me to do is to say that I don't have any reason to believe there's any connection between their story about my affair and any political influence, i.e. Donald Trump. But I'm not going to say that, but I am going to publish the text of the emails they've sent me threatening to release these photos. Basically, I have the receipts and I'm going to print them. And what do the emails say?

So there's a series of emails, threatening emails saying essentially, we want you to come out and say that you have no idea that there's any political motivation behind the story. And when you do that, we'll essentially agree to bury these dick pics. And there's the most incendiary letter is the letter from Dylan Howard, chief content officer of American media, listing the content of the 10 photos, dick pic photo, there's some other photo that suggests oral sex, other stuff that's embarrassing to regular people, let alone billionaires. Basically, like, here's what we have on you.

We're sending this to you on February 5th. We think the Washington Post is about to write a story about the possible political motivations for this leak. You own the Washington Post, and this is the reason we're sending this out today. And by the way, the Washington Post did run that story on February 5th. I mean, this is where it gets kind of conspiracy theory adjacent, right? You've got like the world's richest man, the world's most powerful man, one of the best newspapers in the world, one of the most successful tabloids in the world. It's like a movie waiting to happen. How exactly does Bezos make this connection between himself, the Washington Post, and then the National Enquirer, American Media, its parent company, and the president of the United States.

So that's the tricky part. And Jeff Bezos is smart, and he has smart people who work with him. And they don't exactly connect the dots, but they lay out the dots and allow people like you and me to connect them. In his Medium post, which is quite lengthy, He only mentions Donald Trump by name four times and is basically saying, look, the National Enquirer and Donald Trump have a relationship. It's documented in court. And that's the relationship between Karen McDougal. Yes, where the National Enquirer has been sort of acting as a both promoter of Donald Trump

and someone's publication that is explicitly killing stories that portray him in an unflattering light. Right. It's also facts that Donald Trump has had a problem with the Washington Post's coverage and with Amazon in general. Right. Kind of leaves it out there. And then we have to do the rest of the connecting ourselves because, again, he doesn't have any – or at least he's not presenting any solid proof here that the Enquirer was doing what it did on behalf of Trump or to please Trump. But he certainly allows us to infer that. And so just the big picture inference is the Inquirer published these texts that Bezos was sending his girlfriend because it would please the

president that they were hitting Jeff Bezos that way. Right. Bezos does not say that out loud. Here's one of the things he said. My ownership of the Washington Post is a complexifier for me. Complexifier is a great word. It's unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy. Donald Trump is one of those people obvious by his many tweets, right? So he lays that out. He doesn't say, and thus he has asked the Inquirer to do this. He never says that explicitly. So we've heard from like basically the entire internet about how it feels about this story, but how has the National Inquirer responded since he published this blog

post last night? This morning, minutes before I came to talk to you, the Inquirer put out, American media put out a statement. In short, it says, we didn't do anything wrong. We're sure of it. That said, we are going to investigate this. It's the kind of statement you put out that gives yourself a little bit of wiggle room if eventually you want to come out and say mistakes were made. But their position is, we're fine, we're good. What do you think happens next in all this? It's a good one. You know, the traditional model for a scandal like this is lots of people who don't want to write about the story because they find it unseemly or they're worried about invading someone's privacy now have reason to go after the story again, right?

Jeff Bezos has essentially given you permission to write about Jeff Bezos' dick pics again, which we all did. And so we'll chase this story for a while. And I imagine there is other stuff that will come out, that there are other emails that will come out. I don't know what the Inquirer can do to sort of attack Bezos' story.

But again, the big sort of looming thing here is this isn't just a fight between a really rich person and a tabloid paper. This involves the president of the United States and intimations that this newspaper was working on behalf of Donald Trump, either directly or because it thought it would help him, to take down someone he's politically opposed to. That's potentially a very big deal. We're not there yet, but that's the storyline that I think is going to be most compelling over the next few days. A peek inside the National Enquirer's Vault. That's next on Today Explained.

Hello? Tim from Brooklyn. I have to admit, I'm in Manhattan right now. I gotta go. No, come back. This week, you joined a million other people and now have a Quip electric toothbrush because I sent you one because you kept asking, but you didn't immediately use it.

Have you used it yet? I have used it. For my trip to Manhattan, I used the Clip toothbrush. How did it go? It was great. It did all the work for me. And you do have, we should remind listeners who may have missed it, that you do have a broken wrist as well to add a wrinkle to the story. Yeah, listeners of the pod will remember that I have a broken wrist and can only use my non-dominant hand right now. But, you know, using the Quip, got a little bit of vibration in there. Sensitive vibration, yeah? Was it sensitive, like they say? Yeah.

And I feel good about it. I'm going to go to the dentist soon again, and I feel like she's going to be impressed by my teeth health. I feel like using this differently with the little pulses that tell you when to remove sections of your mouth. That's helpful. Probably actually going to clean my teeth properly for the first time in years. Love a happy ending. Getquip.com slash explain for anyone who doesn't have a podcast fairy godfather out there.

Yeah, I'm going to try this with other products and things that I need to to see if it works. You'd probably get a mattress at some point. Yeah, I can get another one. I'll put it on top of my current mattress. Today, today explained. It's today explained. Yeah, I can get another one. Put it on top of my current mattress. I'm Diana Moskowitz, and I'm a senior editor with Deadspin. And at Deadspin, you've written about the National Enquirer.

This isn't the first time Trump has been linked with the National Enquirer tablet, right? Remind me what happened back in December? Right. So back in December, that was when prosecutors let it be known that American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, had admitted that it had coordinated with Donald Trump's presidential campaign to pay a Playboy model $150,000 in essentially hush money. And that was Karen McDougal? Yes. And that then is putting Trump's inner circle closer to these coordinated hush money. And that was Karen McDougal? Yes. And that then is putting Trump's inner circle closer to these coordinated hush payments. And what's key in this case is that this is during an ongoing presidential campaign. The Inquirer says they're doing this thing with Jeff Bezos for journalistic reasons. They wrote to him that we'll publish these dick pics of you and selfies of you if you don't back off

our brand. What's the tabloid's history with actual journalism been like through the years? I think here it's good to differentiate that we're talking about basically when David Pecker has owned the National Enquirer. And at least during Pecker, we've got documented cases that other journalists have uncovered of them doing this thing called the catch and kill. The catch is where you get something very embarrassing. It could be, in this case, dick pics. It could be people coming forward saying they've had affairs with you. We've had cases where it's been people talking about crimes where women have come forward and said they've been sexually assaulted by very famous people.

And so they get that, and then instead of publishing it, we get to the kill, which is where they then go to that person, and then some sort of bartering happens where a celebrity has given them access or spoken to them for a story in return for the kill. So catch and kill. Are there famous examples of this, or do we never get to find out what they are because they're killed? One of the ones that I know very well involves Bill Cosby with his two trials for sexual assault. In that case, we know what happened was that when women started to come forward saying they had been drugged and raped by him, one of the women who came forward, Beth Ferrier, went to the National Enquirer.

She told her story. She even took a lie detector test for them. I was more concerned for my safety and for people to believe me since I didn't have photos of Mr. Cosby and myself. And then instead of publishing her story, the National Enquirer goes to Bill Cosby and they kill the story.

Beth's story does eventually come out, but she has to find other reporters to tell it. But in return for them sitting on her story, Bill Cosby then gives them this exclusive sit-down interview, which he actually then uses to bash the first woman who came forward, Andrea Constand. It just calls her a liar, accuses her of doing all this for money. The National Inquirer does an exclusive interview with Bill Cosby on, among other things, discrediting the alleged victim. And on top of Bill Cosby also settling with her financially, American media did have to reach a financial settlement with her

in regards to what they published Bill Cosby saying about her. How is that trade-off worth it to them? I mean, they kill a good story to get, what, Bill Cosby just bashing some women? Is that the kind of calculus that National Enquirer is making all the time? It's tough to say how often they make it, but even just with this story recently with Jeff Bezos, now other reporters, including Ronan Farrow, have come forward that they had similar, we could call it a threat made towards them. It's enough that we've seen it come up with Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's been reported that they soft-pedaled their coverage of him leading up to his run for governor in return for access. It came up with Tiger Woods. They sat on a possible

early report of one of his affairs in return for him giving access to another one of their publications. And speaking of Ronan Farrow, it came up in some of his Harvey Weinstein reporting as well. Weinstein gathered ammunition, turned to old allies, and tried to dispense favors to keep his own dirt out of the headline. It is an insight into that world, and it's a very heavily, heavily guarded world. So when you do get to see how it works, it just opens up your eyes to see, oh, that's what's going on? That's how this world works? Okay. Just to make a distinction here, there is a difference between the straight up blackmail kind of extortion that you're hearing about with Ronan Farrow and Jeff Bezos and the kind of catch and kill that you're talking about with Bill Cosby and Tiger Woods, right? Like TMZ does that kind of thing, I've heard.

Right. I mean, with TMZ, if you read stories about them, you'll see sometimes people talk about this legend, this idea of a TMZ vault, and it's filled with embarrassing things that in turn get certain celebrities to cooperate with them. Does the National Enquirer and AMI. The AP reported that the magazine did have a safe which contained documents about hush money payments and various damaging stories it had killed as part of his cozy relationship with Donald Trump, as well as catching kills with other celebrities as well. It sounds like you have a pretty good sense of how the National Enquirer works. Did you learn anything from what happened last night with Jeff Bezos? I mean, on a really basic level, it shows how power works. And I also feel like this is really important to talk about, especially now we're after Me Too and after the Harvey Weinstein story.

And even after, you know, there's just been fresh reporting with people like Bryan Singer, you would always hear from people, oh, why don't people speak out? And I think it's important to show the ways in which there are very powerful mechanisms in place that keep people from speaking out. You know, there are women we now know

who have gone to publications with stories about powerful people, and publications, in this case, you know, the National Enquirer, keep them from getting out. You know, how many times don't we know about? That's what I always wonder. You know, and all the things we know about, it's come out years later, right? Weinstein we found out about years later. Cosby, decades later.

You know, Schwarzenegger, it came out, you know, later after the election. And I think that's why it's easy to be like, oh my God, it's so salacious. It's so silly. Ha ha, dick pics. But this is how powerful people are allowed to operate in this country. You know, you could just pay a certain amount of money and this really embarrassing story about you will just go away. That's just so wild. And has the National Enquirer sort of met its match in Jeff Bezos? Maybe, what, the richest man in the world who, instead of playing ball with them,

just published their emails to the entire world? It's interesting because we're basically talking about celebrities. Bezos isn't that. And he might arguably be richer and more powerful than just about all of them, except for Donald Trump. And that certainly seems to be the case here, where he just felt like, you know, I don't have to play ball. He felt like he could put it out there and whatever damage it might do to his reputation, it would be so much worse, you know, for the other side. And I think he felt like he could do that

when a lot of other people haven't. So yeah, it could be that they just finally dealt with someone who said, I don't have to put up with this. I think I'm more powerful than you. I'm going to show you people how this works. Diana Moskowitz is a senior editor at We appreciate that. Over a million people have shown their appreciation for the Quip by purchasing it. You can do so at getquip.com slash explain. That's G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explain. The Quip starts at 25 bucks. Your first set of refills is free. A podcast from Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, two people who know a whole lot about tech, is worth checking out. This week, they're wishing a happy-ish birthday to Facebook as Facebook celebrates its 15th birthday. Kara and Scott invite a couple of their friends over to talk about how they all really feel about the platform.

It's funny and it's insightful. Pivot.