Concerning the Drudge Report

This is part two on my thoughts on FNC and Drudge. You can find part one on FNC here: Chris of Rights: Concerning Fox News

Quoting myself:

There has been much talk about Drudge turning away from the right and Trump in particular in the last year or so. FNC has been the subject of similar criticisms recently, particularly since Election Night 2020.

I’m curious to see what these two will do now that Trump is out of office.

Drudge is a different case than Fox. I have made the case often over the last year that Matt Drudge is not a conservative and never has been one.

Two things drove what appeared on Drudge, and neither have anything to do with conservatism:

1. Drudge considers himself an old-style muckraker. He looks for the juicy political stories and he goes for splash and sizzle. So, he’s likely to do this no matter who’s in office.
2. It’s always personal with Drudge, not political. He hates, I mean truly loathes, the Clintons. And he thought the Obamas were arrogant fools.

So, initially Trump was useful to Drudge. He opposed the hated Clinton machine.

If Hillary had won in 2016, I’m certain that the Drudge Report would have attacked her mercilessly for four years.

But she didn’t.

If Hillary had run again in 2020 and gotten the Democratic nomination, I am just as certain that Drudge would once again have been on the Trump train.

But she didn’t.

And it was apparent that she wasn’t likely to do so by 2018. So, once Trump had defeated Clintonism, his usefulness to Drudge ended.

Also, Trump definitely gave Drudge plenty of opportunity to be a muckraker. He was able to link to personal scandal after personal scandal and to articles showing dissent in the Trump administration. Trump himself helped with that with tweets attacking members of his own Cabinet.

Of course, this had the effect of souring Trump on Drudge. And thus began the battle between them. A battle Drudge was determined to win, no matter what the cost to his media empire.

So, that’s how we got here. But what does it mean going forward? It’s hard to say. I don’t think Drudge dislikes President Joe Biden (D-USA) in the same way that he hates the Clintons and the Obamas, or in the way that he grew to hate Trump. But he still has that muckraking instinct, and you see that already a little bit. Going to the page, you’re already starting to see some negative articles regarding the Biden administration. Soft ones so far, but the tone change is apparent.

Of course, there’s still far too many articles attacking Trump. But it’s only been 7 days since he left office. Once this latest impeachment farce is over, perhaps he will leave Trump alone. That might depend upon what Trump does.

I think that you will see the Drudge Report appear to start slowly drifting to the right again. But if Biden can remain somewhat scandal free, the drift might be a slow one.