Until that interview, most news outlets were avoiding the story, even here on FR the mods were deleting the threads. The story wasn’t getting traction, so Trump had his toadie Cohen directly accuse Carpenter and the floodgates opened. That was a calculated move period, that was Trump spreading the story.
So what was the $500K to Carly for and how did Trump make him do that?
It blew up on Twitter and was trending worldwide before that happened on CNN.