[6][7] This came after Chatham owner Anthony Melchiorre, whom AMI has also relied on for survival, expressed dismay over the tabloid magazine's recent scandals regarding hush money assistance to U.S. president Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and blackmail of Jeff Bezos.

The paper's editorial content became so salacious that New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. forced Pope to resign from the city's Board of Higher Education in 1954.

In the late 1950s and through most of the 1960s, the publication was known for its gory and unsettling headlines and stories such as: "I Cut Out Her Heart and Stomped on It" (September 8, 1963) and "Mom Boiled Her Baby and Ate Her" (1962).

To gain access to the supermarkets, Pope completely changed the format of the paper in late 1967 by dropping all the gore and violence to focus on more benign topics like celebrities, the occult and UFOs.

In 1974, The National Enquirer began running Bill Hoest's Bumper Snickers, a cartoon series about cars and drivers, collected by Signet into a paperback reprint two years later.

[13] During most of the 1970s and 1980s, The National Enquirer sponsored the placement of the largest decorated Christmas tree in the world at its Lantana, Florida headquarters in what became an annual tradition.

A tree was shipped in mid-autumn from the Pacific Northwest by rail and off-loaded by crane onto the adjacent base of The National Enquirer property.

The surviving owners, including Pope's widow, Lois, sold the company to a partnership of Macfadden Publishing and Boston Ventures for $412 million.

[17][18] After the National Enquirer, led by editor-in-chief David Perel, investigated John Edwards for 18 months it proved that he was having an affair with Rielle Hunter.

In August 2008, in an interview with ABC News, former presidential candidate John Edwards finally admitted to having an extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter but denied fathering her child.

"[21] In July 2008, the publication ran an article claiming to have caught the former North Carolina Senator visiting Hunter, and their alleged illegitimate child at a hotel in Los Angeles.

[22] Fox News interviewed an unnamed security guard who claimed to have witnessed a confrontation between Edwards and the tabloid's members of staff.

[28] Answering John McCain's threat of a lawsuit, a spokesman for the National Enquirer, in a statement to The Huffington Post, declared: The National Enquirer's coverage of a vicious war within Sarah Palin's extended family includes several newsworthy revelations, including the resulting incredible charge of an affair plus details of family strife when the Governor's daughter revealed her pregnancy.

Despite the McCain camp's attempts to control press coverage they find unfavorable, the Enquirer will continue to pursue news on both sides of the political spectrum.

Perel was editor in chief when the paper's investigative unit, formed under him, discovered and published that Jesse Jackson had fathered a love child during his marriage.

[30] The National Enquirer enthusiastically endorsed Donald Trump for the 2016 presidential election and published numerous stories promoting his candidacy and denigrating his opponents.

[31] During the Republican presidential primaries in March 2016, the title ran a story alleging that "political operatives" were investigating whether candidate Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, engaged in extramarital affairs.

The Wall Street Journal said that the tabloid had paid McDougal hush money and was using the purchase and refusal to publish the story to protect Trump (a technique known as catch and kill), an allegation the publication denied.

[45] AMI reporters were given the names of the woman and the alleged child, while Sajudin passed a lie detector test when testifying that he had heard the story from others.

[53] In 1981, actress Carol Burnett won a judgment against the National Enquirer after it claimed she had been seen drunk in public at a restaurant with Henry Kissinger in attendance.

The former longtime chief editor Iain Calder in his book The Untold Story, asserted that afterwards, while under his leadership, the publication worked hard to check the reliability of its facts and its sources.

One of the fired reporters acknowledged that his behavior was unethical, but expressed surprise that the story had been taken seriously, stating, "When I dealt with the National Enquirer, I never dreamed that I was accepting money for 'information'.

"[60] The National Enquirer settled a libel lawsuit with the wife of Gary Condit out of court in 2003,[61] and lost a suit brought by actress Kate Hudson in 2006.

[63] In early March 2007, the paper blocked access to its website for British and Irish readers because a story about the actress Cameron Diaz that they had published in 2005 and for which she received an apology had appeared on the site.

The apology concerned a story it had run in 2005 entitled "Cameron Caught Cheating" which turned out to be false – an accompanying picture was just an innocent goodbye hug to a friend, not evidence of an affair.

[66] The previous week, it had posted an article showing her having collapsed from a cocaine and alcohol binge during her world tour and claiming that she only had five years to live.

[70] Chatham Asset Management owner Anthony Melchiorre, whose company acquired control of 80 percent of AMI's stock, expressed disapproval of the Enquirer's style of journalism.

[71][72] He also acknowledged that "checkbook journalism" served as part of the editorial philosophy he followed when he ran American Media Inc.[72][71] Pecker also stated that he believed that "the only thing that is important is the cover of a magazine.

[73][74] According to reporting by the Associated Press, during the 2016 United States presidential election, stories that supported Trump or attacked his rivals bypassed the newspaper's standard fact checking process.

[87] A 2019 documentary directed by Mark Landsman, Scandalous: The True Story of the National Enquirer, describes the paper's coverage of topics such as the O. J. Simpson murder investigation, the role of paparazzi in the death of Princess Diana, and the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign.