Bad Romance

What happened to the National Enquirer after it went all in for Trump?

- Simon Van Zuylen-Wood

Technically, Dylan Howard didn’t invite me to his book party. Howard, a thirty-seven-year-old long-time editor at the National Enquirer, had canceled on me for an interview three times that week and looked mortified when I showed up. But the publicist for the book— Diana, Case Solved: The Definitive Account That Proves What Really Happened, featuring blurbs by Sean Hannity, Dr. Phil, and Dr. Drew— had forwarded me an invite. When I arrived, at a bar on the second floor of the Moxy, a sexy-trashy boutique hotel in the urban purgatory between Times Square and Penn Station, I found myself among unusual company: Aviva Drescher, formerly of The Real Housewives of New York (2012–2014); Luann de Lesseps, currently of The Real Housewives (fresh off probation for drunken battery against a cop, now promoting a cabaret show); and Megyn Kelly, who hadn’t been heard from since her NBC program succumbed to poor ratings and a blackface comment.

In a corner I spotted Rob Shuter, an Enquirer gossip columnist. You could probably divide the New York media world into people who have and have not heard of Shuter, whose column, “Straight Shuter,” was so named, he says, because “no one gayer has ever set foot in the Enquirer.” In the prestige realm, the realm where people win prizes and argue on Twitter about which New York Times op-ed columnist sucks, no one has heard of Rob Shuter. In the larger parallel universe dominated by morning TV, waiting-room glossies, and celebrity publicists, he is known.