More Fake News: CNN Airs Fake National Enquirer Cover

CNN could not even go a week without another “fake news” scandal.

On Friday, CNN executives reportedly went into a “panic” after Jake Tapper’s The Lead reportedly aired a fake National Enquirer cover during a segment on MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s accusation that President Donald Trump threatened him that the Enquirer would run a hit piece on Scarborough and his relationship with Mika Brzezinski if Scarborough did not apologize for repeatedly insulting Trump.

According to the New York Post’s “Page Six,” the fake cover that aired had the headline “Heidi Cruz: Betrayed by Cheating Husband!” The fake cover apparently “promised details on a ‘sordid threesome, sleazy love letters and sensational photo proof.’”

But, according to Post’s sources at the National Enquirer, the fake news cover “has never appeared on the National Enquirer,” and “the cover is — literally — fake news.”

“We’re told the network is taking the matter seriously, and that it has been referred to the [network’s] standards and practices department for review,” the Post noted.

The morning after Trump tweeted about how “low I.Q.” Brzezinski was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” during a meeting with Trump at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, Scarborough said Trump wanted an apology in exchange for getting the Enquirer to spike the planned hit piece.

“This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas,” Scarborough and Brzezinski wrote in Friday’s Washington Post.

The top White House staffer who reportedly contacted Scarborugh was reportedly Jared Kushner. According to the New York magazine, in “mid-April, Scarborough texted with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner about the pending Enquirer story. Kushner told Scarborough that he would need to personally apologize to Trump in exchange for getting Enquirer owner David Pecker to stop the story.”

The embattled network was rocked this week when three top employees resigned after CNN had to retract a “very fake news” story that, based on one anonymous source, indicated that Trump transition team official Anthony Scaramucci was under Congressional investigation for having alleged ties to a Russian investment fund. After Breitbart News’ Matt Boyle shredded the story, CNN deleted the story from the internet, issued a retraction and editor’s note, and apologized to Scaramucci.

This seems to be the fake National Enquirer cover in question: