Serving as Trump’s page tatters Enquirer

The National Enquirer has long explained its support for Donald Trump as a business decision based on the president’s popularity with readers.

But private financial documents and circulation figures obtained by the Associated Press show that the tabloid’s business was declining even as it published stories attacking Trump’s political foes and, prosecutors claim, helped suppress stories about his alleged sexual affairs.

The Enquirer’s privately held parent company, American Media Inc., lost $72 million for the year ending in March, the documents show.

And despite AMI Chairman David Pecker’s claims that the Enquirer’s heavy focus on Trump sells magazines, the documents show that the Enquirer’s average weekly circulation fell by 18 percent, to 265,000, in its 2018 fiscal year from the same period the year before — the greatest percentage loss of any AMI-owned publication. The slide follows the Enquirer’s 15 percent circulation loss for the previous 12 months, a span that included the presidential election.

More broadly, the documents obtained by the AP show that American Media Inc. isn’t making enough money to cover the interest accruing on its $882 million in long-term debt and that the company expects “continued declines in circulation and advertising revenues” in the current year. That leaves AMI reliant on debt to keep its operations afloat and finance a string of recent acquisitions that are transforming the tabloid news industry.