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Bezos Takes on Nat’l Enquirer; Tabloid Uses Tough Tactics on Celebs

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There’s news, there’s sensationalism, and then there’s The National Enquirer versus Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, claims the tabloid tried to blackmail him after getting its hands on humiliating pictures of him with a woman other than his wife. In a rambling February 7 online post, he shared what he claimed are emails from the Enquirer that he saw as containing threats.

Unverified press reports have suggested that Bezos’ private texts to one-time television host Lauren Sanchez were leaked to the National Enquirer by Sanchez’s brother, Michael Sanchez.

For his part, Sanchez is said to have commented in an email that, “As the ‘Amazon investigators’ proved, I was never sent the numerous penis photos Jeff Bezos sent my sister Lauren. And I never had access to the penis photos. Therefore it is impossible for me to have provided Jeff Bezos’ penis photos to The National Enquirer.”

The feud quickly became the stuff of tabloid legend. “When Jeff Bezos was battling the National Enquirer over the exposés about his private life, he had a simple message for his top lieutenants: Stop feeding the coverage,” wrote Fox News’ Howard Kurtz. “Stop responding to journalists’ questions. Stop engaging with the media even if you’re trying to correct a bad story. That order came as the Amazon founder believed he had tangible evidence that the supermarket tabloid was willing to abide by a cease-fire. It was then that Bezos authorized discussions with his adversaries about the nightmare that began when the paper exposed his affair with Lauren Sanchez.”

The Enquirer has seldom been afraid of controversy. Back in June of 2017, MSNBC morning-show hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough suggested in the pages of the Washington Post that members of the Trump administration had said they would publish a piece in the Enquirer about their as-yet-unacknowledged romance unless they “begged” for the story to be spiked. They didn’t, and the Enquirer did, indeed, run with the story.

Public feuds with Richard Simmons and Dr. Phil, among others, have only burnished its reputation.

Readers, of course, are lapping it up, and having almost as much as the journalists chronicling it. Editor Gitau Warigi of Daily Nation offered this: “This Sunday, let’s veer away from local politics and take a peep into the world of the richest man on earth, Jeff Bezos (he is the founder of the giant technology firm, Amazon), and his poisoned relationship with the world’s most powerful man, President Trump. In the strange mix are Trump’s friends in the Saudi royal family, plus a colorful character called David Pecker, who is indisputably America’s gutter press king by virtue of his position as proprietor of a mass circulation scandal sheet called the National Enquirer.”

By: Kaitlen Fairweather

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