Matt Drudge lobbed sarcasm at the Washington Post after it published an in-depth piece about his coverage of the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.
The Post doesn’t portray Drudge as some sort of Trump sympathizing sycophant. Quite the opposite. But it was more the point of the piece that Drudge found rather, well, stupid.
The Post story by Avi Selk centers on Drudge’s overall affinity for covering presidential impeachments. The piece crawled back to to the House impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. Drudge is referred to as a “major player” in that ordeal, recalling that he broke the news of Clinton’s romantic relationship with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
The author presented conservative media as mocking the hysteria around impeaching Trump. That is, except for Drudge.
“There’s one conspicuous exception: the legendary Drudge Report has for the last three days been spewing ALL CAPS, bolded, underlined, and sometimes bright-red headlines that sound terribly grim for the president.”
Legendary. Oh boy. Did the author maybe want a Drudge hit? A graph later, he’s referred to as “the right-wing Internet’s godfather,” which is not an unfair assessment of Drudge’s role.
The piece assumed the headlines were written by the “elusive” Drudge himself. But were they? As secretive as his employees always are, he does have people working for him who could’ve easily splashed those rather straightforward Trump impeachment headlines on Drudge.
The commenters under the piece got pretty nasty.
“You’re so cute when you post nonsense,” wrote Crickey.
OldUncleTom remarked, “I always viewed Drudge as more opportunist than ideologue. Whatever he does or does not do in modern times will reflect a desire to expand circulation/ad revenues than promoting any cause.”
Arthur Harmon noted, “I love these articles constantly surprised by Matt Drudge’s integrity. It has been plain as day since he started his site.”
Alabama Sharpie fired off an insult: “Must be a slow news day. You can do better than this WaPo.”
Former Hillary Clinton consultant Tracy Sefl‘s told the Post something that must’ve tickled Drudge.
She explained that Drudge’s “loyalties are to himself and the site” — not the GOP.
Which is actually what his Trump headlines reflect.