“The Man Who Knew Too Much” was the only one of Alfred Hitchcock’s films that he saw fit to remake. The original version was released in 1934 when the film creator was still residing in the United Kingdom, and starred Leslie Banks and Peter Lorre, while the second one was made in 1956 after Hitchcock had migrated across the Atlantic to Hollywood and featured Doris Day and James Stewart in the primary roles and also had a somewhat different plot than the original. “Horse Face,” “serial perjurer,” and “dirt bag” have been some of the words that former President Donald Trump has used to characterize Stormy Daniels and his former fixer Michael Cohen respectively in the lead up to the criminal trail he is currently a defendant in a courthouse in Manhattan, but he has been noticeably silent about another witness who is currently testifying against him, David Pecker, who was the owner and operator of the National Enquirer. The tabloid publisher, who is testifying against Trump with a grant of immunity from prosecution for his role in the case, has told of how Trump contacted him as he began to his run for the Republican nomination for president , and asked for his assistance in using his publication to ensure that embarrassing facts about Trump did not become public through a process that is now widely known that was designated “catch and kill” in which Pecker’s operatives would buy the stories that were being offered by several woman as well as a doorman who was in Trump’s employ that detailed his alleged marital infidelities but agreed not to publish them, and the terms of their agreements with the tabloid prohibited them from offering them to other sources since they had been paid for them. His sworn testimony has documented that in addition to that service, the Enquirer ran fictional and nonsensical stories about his political rivals to boost his chances to attain the GOP nomination, and subsequently published unsubstantiated accounts of how his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton was in fact fatally ill and how she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, were involved in fraudulent and illegal activities through the foundation that bore their name. Pecker, in the course of his initial testimony, has told of his friendship with Trump that began in the early 1980’s when the developer had just arrived on the social scene in Manhattan, and was soon a fixture in the high end festivities that are ongoing there, and a former employee of the Enquirer has said that Pecker had a safe in his office that contained other stories about Trump that had put him in an unflattering light, but were also part and parcel of the catch and kill process that Pecker used to protect Trump. Is it possible that the former president is concerned as to what other evidence that the publisher will reveal about him as his testimony continues as well as to what the subsequent cross examination by the attorney’s who are defending him may inadvertently uncover?
Against the Grain 