Yahoo News posted a story on Wednesday morning about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s connections to Robert LiButti, a reputed mob member who was a regular at Atlantic City casinos when the former was in that business. It’s a topic they’ve covered in the past, including how Trump Plaza was fined over connections to LiButti before he was banned from New Jersey casinos. The new story, however, centers around new evidence they discovered that theoretically rebuts Trump’s claims that he didn’t know LiButti: The two of them attending WrestleMania IV together.
Held at the Atlantic City Convention Center (billed as “Trump Plaza” due to the hotel sponsoring the event), Trump is seated in the front row opposite the hard camera throughout WrestleMania IV. LiButti is next to him the whole time. However, even though the show is on WWE Network with minimal edits, this is how Yahoo referred to the clip (emphasis ours):
The reputed mob figure, Robert LiButti, can be seen standing alongside Trump in the front row of a 1988 “WrestleMania” match in Atlantic City, N.J. LiButti wasn’t there by accident, according to his daughter, Edith Creamer, who also attended the event. “We were his guests,” she told Yahoo News in a text message this week.
The video was given to Yahoo News by a confidential source who discovered it in the online archives of World Wrestling Entertainment, the sponsor of “WrestleMania.”
The images and clips in question have the WWE logo on them and appear to be taken from WWE Network’s version of the WrestleMania IV broadcast, not any kind of leaked video taken from WWE’s servers. Also, while worded oddly, that last part of the quoted section isn’t even factually true. as Trump Plaza was the sponsor of the event. That’s why the Atlantic City Convention Center was referred to as “Trump Plaza” for the show, because the sponsoring hotel got naming rights a la Atlantic City boxing events from that era.
Analysis: Politics aside, this is really strange, but also not the first time something like this happened during the election. Other outlets have branded previously broadcast Trump clips as exclusive discoveries, though not necessarily with the “confidential source” angle and sleight of hand used here by Yahoo. Even though there’s news value to tying together Trump and LiButti with the clip, the claims about the sourcing cast a shadow over the entire piece.
