The Drudge Plot Thickens

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how The Drudge Report—or whoever is running it now—began boycotting PJ Media the minute it was announced that we had become part of the Salem/Townhall Media family in 2019. Not only did he/they/whatever remove us from the blog roll, where we had been listed for as long as I can remember, but we stopped getting Drudge links. For a site like PJ Media that exists on razor-thin margins— thanks to Big Tech censorship and a major collapse in digital ad revenues—being cut off from one of the largest media aggregators in the world was a gut punch. We scrambled to find a way to replace that traffic loss and the drop in revenue, and for a while, we succeeded in making it up with Facebook traffic. But then Facebook abruptly cut us off just in time for the 2020 election. Instead of seeing thousands of readers on the site from Facebook at any given moment, we were seeing only a handful. (I just checked our analytics, and ZERO readers on PJ Media right now came from Facebook. That doesn't happen by accident.) 

But I digress. After I published the story about Drudge, my inbox started filling up with stories from people who had quit visiting the site when something changed in 2019. Everyone knew something was different, and while there were different theories about what happened to the once-venerable conservative-ish site (that's a whopper of a story for another day), everyone agreed that it had taken a hard left turn. 

In fact, even Donald Trump has noticed the change. He posted about it on Truth Social and linked to my article: 

What happened next is strange and, at least to me, hilarious. The top headline on Drudge the next day read, "TRUMP ATTACKS DRUDGE." 

"That's strange," I thought. Why would whoever's running the site link to an article that portrays its eponymous (former?) owner in a negative light? Then I clicked on the link. It was nothing but a screenshot of Trump's Truth Social Post, and—get this—the link to my story was cut off. 

Actually, it appears to be a screenshot of a screenshot of the original Truth Social post from Twitter. Now, why would someone go to all that trouble? It obviously would have been easier to just link to the post, but whoever manages the site took the extra time to screenshot it. 

So what does it mean? A few theories I have: 

• Whoever posted the link wanted to highlight the fact that Drudge is now "anti-Trump"—and proud of it.
• Someone over there went for a provocative headline but didn't want anyone to read what I wrote about the fall of Drudge.
• It was an effort to make Drudge—the site and/or the man—the victim in the Drudge-Trump feud.
• This was just another way to crap on PJ Media because of some grudge someone has against us.
• Matt Drudge is still running the site and he liked the attention from Trump, but his vanity got the best of him and he cut out the link. 

I don't know. Just spit-balling here. Let me know what you think in the comments. 

I can't really explain why I'm so fascinated by this guy. I'm sure the mystery behind what happened to the site is a big reason—who doesn't love a great mystery? It may also have something to do with all the late-night shifts I pulled, sending him links to our stories on AOL Instant Messenger when his green light would go on at the same time every night. I admit I got an adrenaline rush every time I sent him a link, and minutes later, I saw the story on the site. Will we ever learn the full story behind the rise and fall of Drudge? I'm not sure. It's amazing that it's been kept secret this long. I'm reminded of when former Nixon "point man" Chuck Colson quipped, "Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world—and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks." He was talking about proof for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but it's an apt maxim to describe the Drudge secrecy. Being mysterious was always part of Matt Drudge's brand, and it continues to this day. I'd love to see some internet sleuths dig in and get to the bottom of the story.

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Drudge who?