During the final days of Ted Cruz’s now defunct campaign, the GOP’s presumptive nominee Donald Trump repeatedly raised and amplified a largely debunked story in the National Enquirer linking Cruz’s father Rafael to John F. Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. The story is based on a photo purporting to show Cruz and Oswald together in the days before that fateful November day in Dallas in 1963. Rafael Cruz had denied that he is the man in the photo, as well as any link to Oswald.
Nevertheless, Trump referenced the National Enquirer’s tale several times in recent days, even seeming to suggest Cruz’s father might have had some culpability in JFK’s killing. What Trump failed to disclose is that, on more than one occasion, Trump himself has actually written for the National Enquirer.
Last summer and fall, Trump wrote a series of largely self-serving pieces for the Enquirer trumpeting his qualifications for the presidency. The articles appeared under the heading “Donald Trump Writes For The Enquirer” and similar headlines:
The August article follows in its entirety, and it reads like Trump’s typical stump speech:
The Enquirer has often written glowing stories about Trump and even touted “exclusive” excerpts from Trump’s book in 2011 as Trump teased supporters about a run for the presidency in 2012.
Trump also wrote original pieces (about himself) for the Enquirer in 2011. A representative sample of Trump’s prose sounds like a self-help ad from the back of a 1970s magazine:
So while Trump promoted the National Enquirer’s smear of Cruz’s father, he was less than forthcoming about his relationship with the tabloid.
