The detestable Donald Trump has been quite slippery and cagey in the last several days– at least, from what us Trumplinologists can best determine from the bilgewater sluicing from the soil-pipes emanating from Trump Isengard.

Follow the footprints in the snow:

Today, Meester Trump was on one of the Sunday Gab-Fests (or, that is to say, his disembodied voice via telephone was) with Jonathon Karl.

Karl started out the festivities by going directly to the National Inkwire Ted Cruz bodice-ripper, and whether or not Donald would “categorically deny that you or your campaign had anything to do with this story”.

…Wherein Trump went off on one of his 300-word run-on sentences, which are, true to form, too clever by half:

“Totally. I had nothing to do with it, the campaign had absolutely nothing to do with it, he’s got a problem with the National Enquirer, I didn’t even know about the National Enquirer, the story, I just got it last night, somebody sent it over to me to read it, so I can at least read what it said. I had nothing whatsoever to do with the National Enquirer, and neither did the campaign, and I will tell you, for him to try to say that I had anything to do, and put the shoe on the other foot is disgraceful, by the way, he’s the one that started it, and from what I hear he, he and his campaign went out and bought the cover shoot, Melania did a cover shoot for G.Q., uh, a very strong modeling picture, no big deal, but it was a cover shoot for G.Q., a big magazine, and it was you know, fine, from what I hear, somebody bought the rights to, you know, and he was the one, his campaign bought the rights, and he gave it to the super-pac, and just so you understand, that super-pac is very friendly to Ted Cruz, he knew all about it, one-hundred percent, so he started it, I didn’t start it.”

We will get back to the substance of this –such as it is– in a moment. But first: Would you buy a 2003 Saturn Ion from this guy when you asked him if the air-conditioner on it worked? “Welllll, lemme tell you, first of all, it worked and it’s great from what I was told and by the way its not really if it works now its does it work when I heard it worked back when we first got the blah blah blah blah harangue, harangue, harangue….”

As for Trump’s response to the question: A bit touchy, there, eh, Donald? He didn’t have anything to do with the story being published, and neither did his campaign. Yippee. BUT: Did he know it was coming? Did he offer any advice to American Media Incorporated and his Buddy Pecker (oops, excuse me: “Peh-KAR”) on the best time to publish it?

Obviously, Trump knew this story was in the pipeline. Heck, even Ted Cruz acknowledged that this septic-spooge was sloshing around the campaign trail for months. The question to ask Trump is “Did you or anyone on your campaign ever discuss the allegations in the Ted Cruz article with David Pecker or anyone on his staff before the article was published? Did you have advance knowledge that the National Enquirer was going to publish the article at some future date?”

To grasp the underlying landscape here, it is important to understand that American Media is hemorrhaging money, and has been for the better part of a decade. Reasons for this are clear: Most gossip-sheets have been displaced as revenue-makers by the click-bait at the bottom of web-pages like Gawker. Newsprint has been ridiculously expensive for twenty years, and the audience for supermarket tabloids is dying. Literally.

BUT: There are certain celebrities that still can cause buyers to pick up a copy of the National Enquirer: For instance, even now, Jackie O will emblazon the cover of the rag, even though most people going through the check-out weren’t even born when Jackie O became famous for her jet-setting lifestyle. Faith Hill has been divorced, like, thirty times according to the National Inkwire. And anything related to Trump causes the faithful Enquirer audience to shell out their meager SNAP benefits change for a peek at their pages.

AMI’s research reveals that their audience wants as much Trump coverage as it can get. Thus, the rag’s endorsement of Trump: “Trump MUST BE PRESIDENT” screamed their recent endorsement. This is all about getting National Enquirer customers to purchase copies of their magazine. You will note the story wasn’t shopped to Scientific American or JAMA.

But, as I said, we have to follow the footprints in the snow to understand what took place:

On March 19th, the “Make America Awesome” super-pac posted the Facebook meme about Melania Trump. A couple thousand people in Utah –tops– saw it.

On March 22nd, the Utah primary was a blowout for Senator Cruz. Remember, Trump knew the Cruz Mistress Crisis article was loaded in the chamber, and the trigger was going to be pulled at some point.

On the morning of Wednesday, March 23rd, TheRealDonaldTrump tweeted out:

“Lyin’ Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife”

“Spill the beans ON YOUR WIFE.”

Not: Spill the beans ABOUT your wife. It is a critical distinction.

Most people, I think, took the Tweet from Trump to mean that he was soon going to start referring to Heidi Cruz’ battles with post-partum depression, or other mental-health related issues. But, the wording of his tweet is crucial. He was going to spill beans ON Heidi. He knew the Inquirer story was coming. Maybe not this week, maybe the next. But, he knew it was coming…

…which explains, by the way, his furious re-tweeting of the despicable meme with Heidi and Melania side-by-side. He knew it would distract the news-cycle (boy, did it ever–!). If the first tweet had gone out (“spill the beans ON” Heidi) without the intervening Thursday tweet, the straight line between Trump and Pecker would have been more obvious. The extra 24 hours was crucial to Donald’s narrative: That he didn’t have anything to do with the Enquirer story.

…But, he knew it was coming. And he, in all likelihood, was aware of it’s general timing.

THAT’S spilling the beans ON Heidi. But, it looks like these beans might be blowing back on Pecker. And Trump.