On Friday’s Battleground State Report with Michael Patrick Leahy and Doug Kellett – a one-hour radio show from Star News Digital Media in the early stages of national weekend syndication roll out – Leahy and Kellett discussed the recent changes in the Drudge Report slant noting that it seems to have taken a turn against the President.
Towards the end of the show, Leahy and Kellett pondered whether or not the Drudge Report had been purchased by a corporate entity hence resulting in the changes of a once pro-Trump site. Citing a major decrease in site traffic to Drudge in November, the men noted that the Bongino Report and other competitors continue to rise.
Kellett: Also something that you’ve got to keep in mind too is the landscape of the media is changing. The end of 2019 and 2020 it’s constantly changing. A lot of it’s more corporate these days. We’ve seen a lot of changes at Fox News for example. You start looking at who owns what and it’s like well OK, for example the Murdoch’s own Fox News but they own The New York Post, but they also own The Wall Street Journal.
Which kind of seems somewhat different and everything. Also the Drudge Report. A lot of people have been talking about the Drudge Report lately and Mike you have about the changes maybe you see on the Drudge Report. Some of the content and everything. There’s been a lot of discussion about that. So what’s going on here?
Leahy: You know I think the two impeachments, the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998-99. The pending impeachment of President Trump in 2019 sort of a 20 year cycle. It may mark a book end for the beginning and end, or transition of the Drudge Report. You may recall Matt Drudge was a very conservative populist libertarian and he broke a lot of news about Monica Lewinsky.
Got the story, Michael Isikoff who had the story that wasn’t going to run for a while about the blue dress and bodily fluid stain, shall we say from Mr. President with the young girl Monica Lewinsky that started all this. Big mess obviously. But for years, for 19.5 years, Drudge was a very reliable conservative. However, it’s an aggregator right?
People would go to the Drudge Report everyday, two or three times a day. A couple months ago that changed. And he was actually a big supporter of Donald Trump. And when we say supporter, it’s how you frame the stories. What’s the lead? Something good for Trump, something bad for Trump.
In the last couple of months, the Drudge Report has turned against Donald Trump. Big time. Big time. And people are saying, what’s going on with Matt Drudge? Now, we have no evidence to support this other than the following: There are numerous rumors Doug, that Matt Drudge has sold the Drudge Report to some corporate entity.
Now we don’t know if that’s the case, but we see these rumors reported. Rasmussen Reports Tweeted about this just a couple days ago. And despite those rumors we’ve also seen the rise of some competitors. There’s a new one. Our friend, Dan Bongino.
Kellett: Yeah, I’ve interviewed him a couple of times.
Leahy: Good guy. He ran for congress in Maryland and then Florida. He was a former secret service agent. Former New York city police officer. And he has a radio program. He started the Bongino Report. Bongino Report.com. There’s several other competitors. Kind of conservative news aggregator. And he points out, Drudge’s traffic has dropped again (Chuckles) by 12% in November.
Listen to the full show here:
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