Drudge Report, a Trump Ally in 2016, Stops Boosting Him for 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/business/media/drudge-report-trump-coverage.html


By Tiffany Hsu

• Sept. 30, 2020
• 
  
• Something has changed at Drudge Report, the influential site known for its tabloid-poetry headlines and conservative take on the news, and don’t think the president hasn’t noticed.

Matt Drudge, a web pioneer who went live with his site in 1995, was seen as an important media champion of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign. “A large measure of why Trump is the nominee goes to Matt Drudge,” Carl Bernstein said four years ago. And Mr. Trump has expressed his appreciation for the fedora-wearing web journalist, calling him “a great gentleman.”

But nowadays, like CNN, The New York Times and many other outlets, Drudge Report is just one more purveyor of “fake news,” in the Trump view.

For anyone who had not stopped by the site since it developed a reputation for lifting Mr. Trump and his brand of conservatism, the welcome page on Monday made for an arresting sight. At the top were images of stickers being sold by the Biden-Harris campaign that read, “I paid more income taxes than Donald Trump.” Below that appeared a scroll of headlines linking to news stories from various sites, all of them written in Mr. Drudge’s staccato style, many of them related to a New York Times investigation of Mr. Trump’s troubled financial history.

“LOST MORE MONEY THAN MADE? … FINANCED EXTRAVAGANT LIFESTYLE WITH USE OF BUSINESS EXPENSES … FAKE BILLIONAIRE? … CAN’T AFFORD TO LOSE: TRUMP OWES $421M.”

Mr. Drudge also did not pull any punches after Tuesday’s presidential debate: “Chaos reigns in hell debate … Undecided voters describe President as a ‘crackhead,’ ‘arrogant’ in focus group … Joe faces down raging Don.

It was a notable shift from four years ago, when Mr. Drudge heralded Mr. Trump’s “rock star welcome in Florida” and highlighted stories that cast doubt on the health of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. His site, back then, also included links to coverage of Trump rallies as they happened.

Cracks started to appear in the summer of 2019, when Drudge Report featured a headline about the slow progress on a barrier Mr. Trump had repeatedly pledged to build along the southern border with Mexico: “NO NEW WALL AT ALL!” In December, when the House of Representatives impeached the president for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the site went big once again: “TRUMP ON BRINK.”

More at link.

 

I think more about playing to their niche and being smart enough to know Trump is unsustainable and has enough sycophants.

I mean you got people trying to monetize going in on Obama from the left, so it's a thing to zig when everybody else is zagging.