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Trump is just like Us Weekly’s favorite celebrity

Talking to the brains behind Lainey Gossip about how the tabloids are treating POTUS.

For five weeks in a row, the Trumps have been on the cover of Us Weekly.

While a traditional president can expect to find himself on A1 of the New York Times each morning, it is, shall we say, the more unusual sort who can look forward to monopolizing the real estate usually reserved for Kim Kardashian’s extended family. Though People got some flack for its November 9 cover announcing Trump’s victory — which came awfully soon after the magazine revealed that Natasha Stoynoff, a People reporter, had been sexually assaulted by Trump years ago while interviewing him for a People story — scarcely a week has gone by since Inauguration Day that the Trumps haven’t graced the cover of at least one celebrity glossy. The New York Post deemed Us Weekly’s wall-to-wall coverage a “cover spree.”

But what’s notable about this coverage is not just the quantity but also the tone: It appears as if the default stance from Us has been one that is critical, or at least skeptical, of President Trump, Melania, and their children. Us ran back-to-back cover stories speculating on the fragile state of both Donald and Melania’s and Ivanka and Jared’s marriages; the former featured Princes William and Harry in the top-right corner, along with a line about how they “never liked Trump.” While a couple of the covers have been neutral-to-positive, the contrast between Us’ approach to the Trump White House and its attitude toward the Obamas is remarkable. Barack and Michelle only made rare appearances on Us Weekly’s cover, and when they (and, on occasion, their daughters) did, the stories were kind and upbeat, like“Why Barack Loves Her: The untold romance between a down-to-earth mom and the man who calls her ‘my rock.’”

Of course, one could dismiss the Us covers and the stories therein as nothing of national import. It’s just gossip, isn’t it? That’s what the stars say whenever unseemly rumors get caught up in their orbit: Rumblings of adultery, hints of impending divorce, buzz about that custody battle, all tossed aside with a carefully carefree, “It’s just gossip.” That’s what we tell ourselves, when we’re at the center of the whispers making the rounds. We all say it, but we know it isn’t true. Even if the story turns out to be false, the fact of the gossip — that a narrative arc, built from nothing, could captivate the masses — is telling in and of itself. And no one understands gossip, the publications that traffic in it, and the individuals about whom so much of it swirls than Elaine Lui.

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Lui is better known to her devoted readers as the Lainey of Lainey Gossip. Hers is a website where ostensibly silly stuff is studied with insight, savvy, and wit: She takes every fragment of celebrity news, investigates it from all possible angles — political, intellectual, financial, glitzy — and analyzes her findings for the rest of us. She pops the back off the watch of the entertainment industry and reveals how all the gears turn.

So if you are intrigued, as this reporter was, by the coverage of the new first family in glossy tabloids, and particularly by the striking quantity and nature of that coverage, Lui is the person to call.

Are celebrity tabloids treating President Trump like a celebrity because celebrity coverage is what they do, or are they just responding to the fact that President Trump behaves more like a celebrity than an elected official? Will Us alienate its readers from red states with stories that allege all is not well in Trump’s family life? Were there ever cultural norms about how celebrity magazines covered the first family, and have those norms — like, apparently, all norms — gone up in flames since Trump took office?

Read on for Lui’s thoughts on all of the above, plus her take on the “Sexiest Man Alive” treatment People gave POTUS, the danger of Ivanka, and why the only person who can stop Trump is Beyoncé.

Trump is our first reality TV president; he often behaves like he’s starring in a reality show, not like he’s running the country. Is covering Trump more like reporting on a traditional Hollywood celebrity than like covering previous presidents?

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Exactly. I think this president has shown us that he actually cares so much about what’s written and said about him, but specifically it’s the vain parts of it. It’s specifically what hits his vanity. There are a lot of people in his position that would be more bothered by you saying he’s stupid and uninformed than if you said, “He’s clumsy and unattractive.” Donald Trump is the opposite. He actually doesn’t care if you think that he’s uninformed, or doesn’t care as much, but he does care when he’s being mocked on a show like Saturday Night Live about the way he talks, about his small hands, when you attack the physical side of things, the way he puckers his mouth and squints and his hair. Those things bother him because he has the vanity of a celebrity. So if you want to get under his skin, put him on a Worst Dressed List. Put him in a “Who Wore it Better?”

It’s amazing to me that there is no one in his life who can tell him how to get his suits tailored, or to stop wearing Scotch tape on his tie. It’s not like he can’t afford it.

But that’s also very celebrity, in the sense that, celebrities are surrounded by yes people. They are surrounded by sycophants, makeup artists, hairstylists, and yes-men who all are there to say, “You’re so amazing! No actor is better or funnier than you!” So celebrities have cocooned themselves in this bubble of narcissism, and that’s him as well.

Us Weekly put the Trumps on the cover five weeks in a row. Three out of five of those covers were negative: Speculating on the weak state of both Donald and Melania’s and Ivanka and Jared’s marriages, and describing “Melania’s struggle.” Are you surprised to see such sustained, and not-glowing, coverage of the first family in Us?

I would say yes and no, for Us Weekly. They had that Trump kids cover, which was pretty positive. To me, Us Weekly and magazines like it, they have a formula. Us Weekly gives a lot of coverage to shows like The Bachelor: What the Bachelor is thinking, and will the couple make it, and how they’re planning their wedding. So it’s kind of funny, to me, that they’re applying a little bit of the Bachelor philosophy of coverage to Jared and Ivanka: Their new journey, will they make it, how are they adjusting to life? The show is over — the campaign is over.

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Essentially, Us is still following their template; they’re just plopping in new characters. So instead of talking about the Bachelor and his pick, it’s Ivanka and Jared.

Well, in that way they are mirroring the president, because he has been taking his cues from The Bachelor. His Supreme Court announcement was basically a Rose Ceremony.

I’m not even a watcher of The Bachelor, and even that spoke to me — the Supreme Court thing — so I can only imagine for hardcore watchers of The Bachelor, how they noticed the similarities.

My sense is that a significant percentage of Us and People’s readers are people who voted for Trump — that those magazines are read across the country, not just on the coasts.

I certainly think a major part of their readership is your conventional readership, definitely. And yes, if you want to call it that, the parts of America that did vote for Trump are definitely part of that.

So does Us Weekly need to be concerned about alienating readers with cover stories about the Trumps that aren’t positive?

I understand where some people are like, “Are you afraid of alienating your readers?” Because you’re disparaging their hero, the person they voted for. And yet I think they already knew that about Trump. They knew that he was a celebrity, that this is the kind of lifestyle he led: all drama, some scandal, very sensational. So I think it feeds into exactly why they voted for him. I don’t think they were under any illusions that he wasn’t a celebrity.

“Us is still following their template; they’re just plopping in new characters. So instead of talking about the Bachelor and his pick, it’s Ivanka and Jared.”

I’m not American, so take it with a grain of salt, but I would imagine that their appeal for them is because he is a celebrity, because he was sensational. So I don’t think that it’s going to be a turnoff. I think it might even be more of a draw. The fact of the matter is that he won on his celebrity. So continuing to be a celebrity and all the accouterments that go with being a celebrity, you can’t take that away.

Does that explain People’s election cover, then?

I don’t know that I have a gauge on that. What I will say is, what People did, in their cover on November 9, was, they put the President-elect at the time on the cover of their magazine in the same way that they would have announced or presented to people the Sexiest Man Alive, which is one of their most famous features. So he’s kind of in motion, walking towards the camera, and the vibe that you get from this photo is: Man of action! On the go, doing things! And that is very in tune with Sexiest Man Alive. I think that it would have been different if they put out a cover that said, “Will this man be our most controversial president?” And have maybe a less windblown-in-his-hair about it, I think people would have reacted differently. It’s just that they chose to present him in this heroic light.

So if you want to ask to draw a comparison, People slotted him into a role they typically slot for movie stars, and that’s their template, so [Us Weekly’s thinking is], why don’t we use our template and put the Trumps into our existing template, which is Bachelor and Kardashian-style coverage?

It seems like a huge deviation from their norm, though, as far as first family coverage goes. I can’t recall any negative Us Weekly covers about the Obamas. Not that anyone would have believed a “Trouble in Paradise: Barack and Michelle Fight in Hawaii” story, but I also thought there were some unwritten rules about generally positive and respectful lifestyle coverage of the first family — particularly their children.

As we’ve seen across the board for all kinds of issues, this is an unprecedented presidency. So while every other press outlet that isn’t tabloid and celebrity is throwing out the rule book because of who the president is, I think Us Weekly and People are just a reflection of what’s going on in the larger sense.

And that’s always been my argument about celebrity gossip: It’s a more profound conversation than most people give it credit for, because it’s not just about who fucked who and who is backstabbing who. It’s actually a reflection of our greater society. So celebrity coverage is always simply a mirror holding itself up to who we are.

So you don’t think Us Weekly is worried at all about losing access to the Trumps after these negative stories run?

I don’t think so, not at all. Again, this is a celebrity president. He loves being a celebrity and he loves being seen as a celebrity. So I don’t think it matters to him what their coverage has been so far if it means that the coverage of him and his family is on pages that are next door to the people who are going to the Oscars. I think that in his personal taste. He probably prefers to be depicted in a glossy with all kinds of colors.

People have compared him to a toddler, and think about it: He’s like, “Look at this pretty magazine with all these pretty girls and all these colors, and I get to be in that, too! Here’s me on one page, and you turn the page and it’s Scarlett Johansson.” I think he gets off on that, personally. So I don’t think he minds. I think that supersedes the negativity.

“I understand where some people are like, ‘Are you afraid of alienating your readers?’ Because you’re disparaging their hero, the person they voted for. And yet… They knew that he was a celebrity, that this is the kind of lifestyle he led: all drama, some scandal, very sensational. So I think it feeds into exactly why they voted for him.”

In the wake of the sexual assault allegations against Trump by one of People’s own reporters, I was a bit taken aback by their election cover. Were you?

Celebrity coverage doesn’t surprise me anymore, because we are in such a peak era of celebrity consumption. But I have to admit that I was a little taken aback by People’s coverage because they had a former writer who had this experience with him, and they came out in such full support of her prior to the election, just weeks before.

And it was in line with a conversation that we, collectively, socially, have been having over the last couple of years about consent and sexual assault. Last summer we learned about Emily Doe and Brock Turner, and People routinely covers issues about campus safety and women who are sexually assaulted. And then you have the president as part of this conversation about consent and sexual assault against women. So I was taken aback that their about-face was so sharp. Because I actually thought, it was a personal story, it was one of their own. So I thought because Natasha Stoynoff was one of their own, they would take a different approach, or at least, wait.

Do you think Us Weekly saw the reaction to the People cover and thought: “Okay, we can go negative on the Trumps, Donald is unpopular and our readers are game”?

People and Us Weekly, are much different, to me. I call the People fanbase the “minivan majority.” I came up with that term probably 15 years ago. And People magazine has a higher number of subscribers, not just people who walk by the newsstand, than Us Weekly. Those subscribers are of a certain mindset and perspective, where, yeah, they do want a flavor for the positive of Trump. Whereas the Us magazine reader is willing to get a little dirty. They love Kardashian shit. They love Bachelor shit. So there is a difference in their demos. And People magazine needs to be nicer. This is definitely a friendlier, nicer, more saccharine magazine, where Us Weekly can get a little more sensational.

“He’s like, ‘Here’s me on one page, and you turn the page and it’s Scarlett Johansson!’ I think he gets off on that, personally.”

So in a way, tabloids are better prepared to cover this aspect of the Trump presidency than traditional news outlets are, because this isn’t really a deviation from what they’ve been doing all along?

Yeah! If you think about it, that’s how this president is being covered now. Everything is about leaks right now. Everything is about “an inside White House source’ or “a national security source.” All the language is sounding like a celebrity magazine now. “A source close to the president tells CNN.” It’s exactly the same sentence phrasing as you would read in Us Weekly: “A source close to Anne Hathaway…”

Are you surprised at all by the quantity of Trump coverage in the tabloids? Five Us Weekly covers in a row is an awful lot, and there’s been other celebrity news going on: Beyoncé’s pregnancy and the Grammys, the Oscars coming up, Amal Clooney’s pregnancy.

I’m going to be honest with you: I’m Canadian and the biggest story for me, in my circle of friends, has been American politics. No one can believe it. And I work on a daily talk show similar to The Talk and The View in America, called The Social. It’s four women sitting at a table talking current affairs. And we talk so much about your election and your government, because you can’t look away. No one can. Even Canadian news coverage is heavily focused on what Trump is doing.

“[People] put the President-elect at the time on the cover of their magazine in the same way that they would have announced or presented the Sexiest Man Alive.”

So this really is the biggest conversation across the board, not just celebrity news but news news and social news and whatever. So any entertainment or otherwise outlet is following the biggest story. Yes, there are other things going on in the world of celebrity, so when Beyoncé announced her pregnancy, I forgot about Trump for 24 hours. So it takes a Beyoncé, an Angelina Jolie, a Taylor Swift. I’m never going to say that Donald Trump is more interesting to me than Beyoncé. I live for Beyoncé. To quote Adele, she is the icon of my life. But yeah, the biggest stories over the last three weeks have been Beyoncé is pregnant, and whatever Donald Trump gets up to.

I guess the moral of the story here is: The only person who can stop Trump is Beyoncé.

Is Us Weekly sidelining celebrity coverage in favor of Trump coverage, or is there no meaningful distinction between the two?

I don’t think you can separate them anymore. Look at most celebrity Twitter accounts. Most celebrity twitter accounts are about Donald Trump. You would be hard pressed to find a celebrity — except for Taylor, which is so glaring — to find one who hasn’t talked about this. Chris Evans is getting into Twitter fights with David Duke. It’s getting personal. Chrissy Teigen is tweeting directly to Donald Trump. So I think that Us Weekly actually has a very good rationale for covering the president, because celebrities are following the president.

It does seem like we’ve reached a point where being apolitical makes you look a little clueless. I was surprised by how long it took, in the Grammys telecast, for the show to address politics head-on.

Jennifer Lopez was one of the first presenters, she came on early in the show and did her thing about Toni Morrison. Everybody is going to read that as a dig at the current administration, about activism, and how artists have to use their voice. And you’re right, after that there was very little. But I do believe that the Recording Academy — they got so much wrong on Grammy night — but allowing or asking Jennifer to read that quote from Toni was their way of saying this is who we are, as artists.

Moving on from Donald, what about his children? Any last thoughts on the rest of the family?

Don’t underestimate Ivanka. I think Ivanka, in many ways, going forward, could be even more dangerous, if you are someone who thinks Donald Trump is dangerous. Because it is that white beautiful privileged woman holding onto it, and then somehow trying to sell herself as an emblem of progress, that could actually hold us back in a more lasting way.