Russia keeps Evan Gershkovich detained, Scripps News welcomes ex-Vice News staffers, Mitch McConnell finds a spine and gets candid about Tucker Carlson, TikTok divest-or-ban nears Senate vote, Spotify shares rocket after record profits, Taylor Swift breaks a record about records, Jon Stewart retains his audience, and more. But first, the A1. 

Confessions of the Tabloid King

CNN Photo Illustration/Michael DiVito Photography

Donald Trump and his allies like to complain at length about imagined "collusion" between the Democratic Party and the media. But on Tuesday, former National Enquirer boss David Pecker lifted the curtain on the actual media collusion that took place in the 2016 election.

Pecker revealed in granular detail how Trump worked hand-in-hand with the infamous national tabloid to boost his candidacy and, perhaps far more importantly, simultaneously smear his political opponents with shameful lies and innuendo. 

"I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr. Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents," Pecker said under oath at Trump's historic hush-money trial in New York. "I said I would be your eyes and ears because I know that the Trump Organization has a very small staff."

The highly-anticipated court appearance from Pecker, who was granted immunity in exchange for his candid testimony at the trial, put a floodlight on the dark underbelly of the Enquirer, with the tabloid portrayed in open court as a tawdry publication willfully serving as a political weapon for Trump — truth and basic ethics be damned.

Pecker spoke at length about how he worked with former Trump attorney Michael Cohen to "catch and kill" stories that could have damaged the then-candidate, such as former Playboy model Karen McDougal's allegations of an affair, which the Enquirer paid $130,000 to bury. Pecker said that at the outset of the campaign he believed "there would be a lot of women who would come out to try to sell their stories" about Trump because he was "well known as the most eligible bachelor."

To that end, Pecker said he served as Trump's eyes and ears, alerting the then-candidate's camp to potentially embarrassing stories that hovered on the horizon. In fact, Pecker was so determined to protect Trump that he even purchased a story from Manhattan doorman Dino Sajudin, despite believing it to be bogus. That story, which the Enquirer paid $30,000 for, alleged Trump had fathered an illegitimate child, prompting the tabloid to deploy a team of reporters to chase down the truth. While Pecker eventually determined the story was false, his publication paid five figures for the story anyway.

"If there was any rumors in the marketplace about Mr. Trump or his family or any negative stories that were coming out or things that I heard overall that I would go through, I would call Michael Cohen directly," Pecker said.

Meanwhile, Pecker worked with Cohen to smear Trump's Republican rivals in the 2016 primary, including Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. Pecker testified that the Enquirer would "communicate what we were doing at the direction of the article from Michael Cohen," even sending the then-Trump lawyer PDF copies of the stories in advance. 

"He would comment on them, so we would add content based on the information Cohen provided them," Pecker said.

At times, Pecker said that Cohen went as far as to contact him and direct the Enquirer to attack Trump's GOP rivals. 

"Michael Cohen would call me and say, 'We would like you to run a negative article on a certain — let's say for argument sake — on Ted Cruz, then he — Michael Cohen — would send me information about Ted Cruz or Ben Carson or Marco Rubio, and that was the basis of our story and then we would embellish it from there," Pecker told the courtroom.

When the Enquirer published negative stories about Bill and Hillary Clinton, Pecker said that Trump was elated.

"He was pleased," Pecker recalled.

The relationship, however, between Trump and Pecker was kept secret from staff. Pecker, who revealed in court he operated a clandestine email account that his assistant did not have access to or know about, said he feared leaks and didn't want "anyone to know" about the pact he had with Trump. Paranoid about the mutually beneficial relationship making its way to the press, Pecker only told select people about it, including then-top editor, Dylan Howard.

"I told him we're going to try to help the campaign, and to do that, I want to keep this as quiet as possible," Pecker said.

While the days of the Enquirer boosting Trump while publishing false and sleazy stories about his opponents are over, the habit remains prevalent in right-wing media. Far more powerful outlets, such as Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, continue to debase themselves in service of Trump, acting as his propaganda vehicles.

Case in point: While MAGA Media would be apoplectic if President Joe Biden were being tried in criminal court, coverage has been scant and/or bent in favor of Trump in right-wing media. Fox News on Tuesday barely covered the explosive revelations from Pecker. And when the outlet did offer its audience coverage of the trial, it was through an unmistakable pro-Trump lens. Meanwhile, Fox News and other right-wing outlets continue to launch ugly — and often dishonest — attacks on Biden.

As it turns out, there will always be grossly unethical behavior among those in partisan media. And Trump knows precisely how to exploit that fact to his advantage — a reality that the hush-money case is underscoring for the sect of the public not locked in his warped propaganda universe.

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Russia Rejects Evan's Release: No surprise here, but Russia on Tuesday rejected another motion by Evan Gershkovich to exit pre-trial detention. That means The WSJ reporter will remain in a Moscow prison until at least June 30. According to journalists in the room, the 32-year-old appeared relaxed, smiling at times from inside a glass box and making thumbs-up and heart-shaped gestures to fellow reporters. "It continues to be outrageous that Evan has been wrongfully detained by the Russian government for more than a year," The WSJ said in a statement. "Evan's freedom is long overdue, and we urge the administration to do everything in their power to secure his release." The WSJ's Ann M. Simmons has more here.

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First in Reliable | Scripps Scoops Up: Since the downfall of Vice News, more than a dozen of the outlet's journalists have set up shop at Scripps News, which has made a deliberate push to hire the talent, I'm told. The push to bring on the ex-Vice journalists comes as Scripps News works to add Vice's trademark style of unfiltered and raw reporting to its "In Real Life" docu-series program. "We've taken the immersive storytelling of our 'In Real Life' series up a notch this season by adding many excellent journalists from VICE News and across the industry," Zach Toombs, the show's executive producer, explained to me. The first episode of season six, which was created almost entirely by former Vice journalists, premieres this Sunday at 8pm ET. Watch the trailer here.

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Meek McConnell: Where was this Mitch McConnell when it mattered? While Tucker Carlson used his powerful perch on Fox News to lie about Ukraine and peddle propaganda beneficial to Russian authoritarian Vladimir Putin, McConnell stood by silent. But now that Carlson no longer has the same power, McConnell, as he prepares to exit Senate leadership, has suddenly found a spine. The Senate Minority Leader blasted Carlson on Tuesday for the "demonization of Ukraine." McConnell said the online vlogger ultimately "ended up where he should have been all along, which is interviewing Vladimir Putin." And he, accurately, noted that the right-wing extremist warped the Republican Party while at Fox News. "He had an enormous audience, which convinced a lot of rank and file Republicans that maybe this was a mistake," McConnell said. Of course, Carlson would not have been able to deform the GOP had its leaders **cough, cough McConnell** remained silent throughout. Speaking out after the fact is not a profile in courage – it's an affirmation of cowardice.

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Time Runs Out for TikTok: TikTok is truly running out of time. The short-form video app is about to watch as the Senate passes divest-or-ban legislation and sends it to President Joe Biden's desk, where he is expected to sign it into law. The Senate voted Tuesday to advance the bill, which is attached to a larger foreign aid package, to the floor. Once the bill becomes law, TikTok is expected to immediately file a legal challenge. NBC News' Sahil Kapur and Frank Thorp V have more here.

🔎 Zooming in: "Let's talk about how that legal fight is likely to play out," Casey Newton writes in Platformer. "Interviews with legal scholars suggest that the government will have a difficult time proving that its effort to ban TikTok is constitutional. But First Amendment cases are often unpredictable, they say — and it's possible that the government's appeals to national security could ultimately lead the Supreme Court to uphold the law."

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Swift's Vinyl Victory: Taylor Swift is breaking records — about records. In just three days, Swift's "The Tortured Poets Department" has sold more vinyl copies in a single week than any previous album in the modern era, shattering the previous record, which she of course held. According to initial numbers released from Luminate, Swift managed to sell more than 700,000 copies of her latest album, pushing past the previous 693,000 copies she sold for "1989" in seven days. The vinyl sales make up a big portion of Swift's overall 1.5 million copies of "TTPD" sold across both physical and digital formats. As Variety's Chris Willman noted, Swift is a vinyl-selling machine. More from Willman.