Matt Drudge, the mysterious media maven, conservative kingmaker, and arguably the most influential news aggregator in history, has officially found himself on Donald Trump’s “no longer hot” list. It’s a club that includes just one other member: Vanity Fair, whose Oscar party the president declared “no longer ‘hot’” before he took office. For someone who repeats insults reflexively—“like a dog” and “choked” and “low energy” being prime examples—this shows remarkable restraint. It’s a safe bet, then, that this specific insult is reserved for those toward which Trump feels complete and utter disdain.
Matt Drudge has earned his place on the president’s hit list. He was a key player in helping the president win the 2016 Republican primary, and thus the presidency, and visited the White House early on—Trump once called him a “great gentleman” and treated his headlines like gospel. Why the fall from grace? The answer is fairly straightforward: In Trump’s simple mind, those who exclusively praise him are good, and those who don’t are bad, no matter their shared history. Drudge was one of the earliest major media figures to champion then candidate Trump in 2015 and acted as a de facto publicist on behalf of the campaign, according to former Trump campaign adviser Sam Nunberg, a claim he made in Matthew Lysiak’s biography The Drudge Revolution. However, last summer, cracks began to show in their symbiotic relationship as the Drudge Report’s top headline blared, “No New Wall At All!” The aggregation site, which regularly drives hundreds of millions of page views every month, hasn’t let up on the president since, following its initial shot with a jab over the expansion of big government policies “On Trump Watch”; a line on how Trump’s “trash talk” has hurt his favorability among suburban women; and a warning from farmers that the president’s trade wars are “ruining our markets.”
By late 2019, Drudge’s relatively nuanced, policy-based scrutiny of Trump had bloomed into him seemingly hopping on the pro-impeachment bandwagon. As the White House’s Ukraine scandal dragged on last fall, the Drudge Report’s headlines began to read like HuffPost, rather than a publication routinely read on air by conservative talk-radio hosts; selections included “Republican criticism [of Trump] mounts,” “Senate likelier to remove,” “Trump on Brink,” and one that simply juxtaposed the word “Swamped” with a strategically chosen photo of the president looking deflated.
The president returned fire in April when Drudge ran a headline that read “NO PEAK YET,” warning of the impending body count caused by coronavirus. “I gave up on Drudge (a really nice guy) long ago, as have many others,” Trump tweeted. He also retweeted a post accusing Drudge of sensationalizing and spreading lies about the pandemic. And he concluded the series by claiming that the Drudge Report’s readership is dwindling by the day: “People are dropping off like flies!” For the fedora-wearing recluse, who is rarely seen outside his South Florida compound, much less driven to make a public comment of any kind, it was apparently a bridge too far. “The past 30 days has been the most eyeballs in Drudge Report’s 26 year-history,” Drudge wrote in an emailed statement to CNN. “Heartbreaking that it has been under such tragic circumstances.”
The conflict escalated again this month, when a particularly aggressive Drudge headline noted Trump’s denial that a “Mini-Stroke Sent Him to Hospital,” complete with a beautifully clickable kicker: “VIDEO: [Trump] Dragging Right Leg.” This was apparently the final straw for Trump, who decided it was time for no more Mr. “really nice guy.” He responded by insisting that Drudge did not support him in 2016 and “doesn’t support me now. Maybe that’s why he is doing poorly. His Fake News report on Mini-Strokes is incorrect.” Trump then posited that Drudge is “Possibly thinking about himself, or the other party’s ‘candidate,’” referencing his claims about Joe Biden’s diminishing mental state. Curiously, Drudge has not pushed the theory that Biden is losing it, despite most conservative outlets obsessing over the Democratic nominee’s supposed cognitive decline. His decision to opt out is particularly notable given that, in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, his site aided in spreading conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s supposedly failing health.
The president has continued to batter his old friend this week, tweeting on Sunday that Drudge’s site “is down 40% plus since he became Fake News. Most importantly, he’s bleeding profusely, and is no longer ‘hot.’ But others are!” In a Monday tweet, he claimed, “Our people have all left Drudge,” and tagged the site’s namesake to call him “a confused MESS, has no clue what happened. Down 51%.” He finished his tantrum by promoting a new Drudge Report competitor, writing that his supporters are now reading sites “like REVOLVER.” Launched over the summer, just months after the president first began attacking Drudge, Revolver News is a conservative aggregation website that caters to ardent Trump supporters and coronavirus skeptics with headlines like: “COVID-19 Lockdowns Over 10 Times More Deadly Than Pandemic Itself.” Its notable readers thus far include Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican who pushed an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, and Michelle Malkin, a right-wing commentator who recently hailed a white nationalist figure as one of the “New Right leaders.” Darren J. Beattie, an ex–White House speechwriter who left his Trump appointment in 2018 after it was revealed that he spoke at a conference attended by white nationalists, works for Revolver News—and appeared Tuesday night on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show.