Internet publisher Matt Drudge wanted Bararck Obama to become president even though he felt it was going to be bad for the country.
Andrew Breitbart, founder of Breitbart.com was working for Drudge as the morning editor during the 2008 presidential campaign.
“In 2008, [Breitbart] became absolutely convinced that Matt was working very hard to have then-Senator Barack Obama elected to the presidency,” writes journalist Matthew Lysiak.
“He was pulling his hair out over this. Andrew would post a story about Rev. Jeremiah Wright and from whatever undisclosed location Drudge was working at on his computer, he would go and replace those stories with something favorable about Obama.”
“Eventually, Andrew Breitbart got up the courage to ask him ‘what gives?’ and Matt told him that while yes, an Obama presidency might be absolutely terrible for the country, it would be great for the website.”
“The truth is that he was 100% right, I can’t think of many people who did better than Matt Drudge under an Obama presidency. Matt is focused on the bottom line, he always has been,” Lysiak says.
Lysiak is writing an upcoming book on the secretive Drudge titled, The Drudge Revolution: The Untold Story of How Talk Radio, Fox News, and a Gift Shop Clerk With an Internet Connection Took Down the Mainstream Media. The book is also being made into a biopic.
Drudgereport.com was an unknown website until the late 1990’s when the story of former President Bill Clinton and his affair with White House Intern Monica Lewinsky was first published on it. Since then the website has become one of the most influential websites in conservative news and on the internet more broadly.
The Gateway Pundit reports:
“Every single campaign, beginning in the late 90s, had someone they referred to as a ‘Drudge Whisperer’, and the Trump team chose Jared Kushner to fill that role,” Lysiak told the Gateway Pundit. “I think it was a really intelligent move because Kushner had a background as a publisher for the Observer. He understood the media. For a while, this was like the ultimate Matt Drudge win-win, because Kushner and team Trump were feeding him stories and that was getting tons of page hits.”
Lysiak added that Drudge’s influence on the campaign should not be understated.
“Inside the campaign there was a nickname for Matt Drudge — we called him Lady Drudge,” former Trump aide Sam Nunberg asserts in the book. “Drudge essentially began acting as Jared’s publicist.”
While Drudge may have been instrumental in getting Trump elected, the 180 that Drudge has spun, Lysiak believes, is a business decision rather than an ideological one.
“He thinks that in the long run it’s going to pay off for him,” he said.
Recently many right-leaning readers have criticized The Drudge Report for the apparent shift in ideology to the left. Lysiak for one is perplexed by that however, contending that Drudge has never attested to being a conservative.
“Matt has never been a conservative. He describes himself as a Libertarian,” Lysiak says.
“The mistake people make when analyzing Matt Drudge is that they often look at him through a political lens. The reality is that Matt Drudge’s loyalty isn’t to any political party or ideology — but to his website,” he added.