President Donald Trump renewed his attacks on Matt Drudge, the longtime political commentator and editor of the news aggregator Drudge Report, over the weekend and into Monday.
Remarking on a post that said the Drudge Report had seen a “historic crash,” the president wrote on Twitter Sunday, “Such an honor! Drudge is down 40% plus since he became Fake News. Most importantly, he’s bleeding profusely, and is no longer “hot”. But others are! Lost ALL Trumpers.”
Trump continued his attacks on Monday writing, “Our people have all left Drudge. He is a confused MESS, has no clue what happened. Down 51%. @DRUDGE They like REVOLVER and others!”
The figure from the Sunday tweet is accurate: According to Comscore data provided by TheRighting, which tracks traffic to conservative news sites, the Drudge Report had 2.399 million unique visitors in July 2019 and 1.488,000 unique visitors in July 2020. That’s a 38% drop year over year. It was not immediately clear to what Trump referred when he said Monday Drudge was “down 51%.”
Drudge — whose claim to fame is that he aggregates news from around the internet and lists headlines and links in a simple format on his website, often deciding the talking points of the day — has faced steady criticism not only from Trump, but from other conservatives for not being friendly enough to Trump. Notably, Fox News’ Dan Bongino made his own site last year to highlight news from conservative outlets as a competitor to the Drudge Report.
On Monday afternoon, Drudge’s site was leading with headlines like, “MASK OFF! In defiance of Nevada governor, Trump holds indoor rally…” and, “MAG: Trump Could Be on Trial Sooner Than Think…”