[beejaa]

In previous campaign news:

… as Carson overtakes Trump as the GOP front-runner, it appears Trump is getting help from a media outlet known for ending presidential candidacies: the National Enquirer. Earlier this month, the Enquirer published a cover story on Carson headlined “Bungling Surgeon Ben Carson Left Sponge in Patient’s Brain!” The article called Carson a “White House wannabe” and claimed he “brandished a scalpel like a meat cleaver!”

…Trump and Enquirer CEO David Pecker have been friends for years. “They’re very close,” said a source close to the Enquirer.

This person also said that Trump’s campaign was a source for the article: “His campaign provided information that was used,” he explained. A Trump friend said that in the days leading up to the article’s publication Trump was telling people that Carson “had a lot of medical malpractice suits” and “almost killed a guy.”

Trump’s spokesperson, Hope Hicks, told me “there’s absolutely no truth” to the claim Trump was behind the article. When I asked the Enquirer for comment, Pecker said it was “utterly false” that the Trump campaign was their source.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/trumps-alliance-with-the-national-enquirer.html

[Baumer]

In addition to the stories in the NE bashing Carson last Fall that you refer to in your post, there was also this in the OP article:

"According to four sources with knowledge of the situation, editors and writers at the outlet have privately complained since at least last year that the company’s top management was allowing Trump to turn Breitbart into his own fan website—using it to hype his political prospects and attack his enemies. One current editor called the water-carrying ‘despicable’ and ’embarrassing,’ and said he was told by an executive last year that the company had a financial arrangement with Trump. A second Breitbart staffer said he had heard a similar description of the site’s relationship with the billionaire but didn’t know the details; and a third source at the company said he knew of several instances when managers had overruled editors at Trump’s behest. Additionally, a conservative communications operative who works closely with Breitbart described conversations in which “multiple writers and editors” said Trump was paying for the ability to shape coverage, and added that one staffer claimed to have seen documentation of the ‘pay for play.’"

Of course we'll be told that isn't true and it means nothing just like his mouth piece friend Pecker at NE I'm sure had no connection to this Cruz story if it's false too.