{"id":134074,"date":"2020-08-28T11:58:09","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T19:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=134074"},"modified":"2024-04-19T06:36:28","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T14:36:28","slug":"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","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=134074","title":{"rendered":"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"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>!function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src=\"https:\/\/rumble.com\/embedJS\/uajap1\"+(arguments[1].video?'.'+arguments[1].video:'')+\"\/?url=\"+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+\"&args=\"+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, \"script\", \"Rumble\");<\/script><\/p>\n<div id=\"rumble_v9md29\"><\/div>\n<p><script>\nRumble(\"play\", {\"video\":\"v9md29\",\"div\":\"rumble_v9md29\"});<\/script><\/p>\n<p><script>!function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src=\"https:\/\/rumble.com\/embedJS\/uajap1\"+(arguments[1].video?'.'+arguments[1].video:'')+\"\/?url=\"+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+\"&args=\"+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, \"script\", \"Rumble\");<\/script><\/p>\n<div id=\"rumble_v9mfhh\"><\/div>\n<p><script>\nRumble(\"play\", {\"video\":\"v9mfhh\",\"div\":\"rumble_v9mfhh\"});<\/script><\/p>\n<p><script>!function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src=\"https:\/\/rumble.com\/embedJS\/uajap1\"+(arguments[1].video?'.'+arguments[1].video:'')+\"\/?url=\"+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+\"&args=\"+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, \"script\", \"Rumble\");<\/script><\/p>\n<div id=\"rumble_v9mg67\"><\/div>\n<p><script>\nRumble(\"play\", {\"video\":\"v9mg67\",\"div\":\"rumble_v9mg67\"});<\/script><\/p>\n<p><A HREF=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Drudge-Revolution-Internet-Connection-Mainstream-ebook\/dp\/B07ZKVYTTB\/ref=sr_1_13?dchild=1&#038;keywords=talk+radio&#038;qid=1598642807&#038;s=books&#038;sr=1-13\">From the 2020 book by Matt Lysiak<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>* For those who had accompanied the Republican nominee to the debate, the sense of anticipation came with the full knowledge that the moments to follow in the debate would forever change the trajectory of each one of their lives. Perhaps no one understood that more than Steve Bannon, who had left his position as executive chairman of Breitbart.com when he was appointed chief executive of Donald Trump\u2019s presidential campaign. A Trump defeat would very likely relegate Bannon to a footnote in history, but a victory would vault him into one of the most consequential positions of power in the world. And Bannon knew it. He also understood that the chances of a Trump victory appeared to be more rooted in fantasy than political reality. RealClearPolitics polling showed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton with a seemingly insurmountable seven-point lead.<br \/>\nStill, the campaign wasn\u2019t without hope. Internal polling showed a much tighter race with hopes resting on the belief that non-college-educated white voters were being underrepresented in major national polls.<br \/>\nDonald Trump was minutes away from going onstage. His advisers needed to pull Matt out of the audience right away for a quick one-on-one with their candidate, but there was a slight problem: Did anyone even know what Matt Drudge looked like?<br \/>\nOver the past decade, Matt had disappeared from the public eye. He openly brags that it\u2019s been years since anyone has managed to snap his picture. If someone does pull out a phone in his presence, Matt covers his face with his hands.<br \/>\nHis mysterious persona was consciously cultivated in the belief that the Drudge Report would be more powerful without a public face attached to it. \u201cLet the Drudge Report be,\u201d he told a friend before going dark. \u201cRemove the face. Remove the target. Just let the Drudge Report stand for itself.\u201d And Matt\u2019s instincts would be proved right.<br \/>\nBy October 2016 the site\u2019s power had reached new levels. Only weeks earlier, during a radio interview, Texas senator Ted Cruz placed the blame for his electoral defeat on Matt Drudge. And Cruz wasn\u2019t alone. Jared Kushner, who had forged a relationship with Matt months earlier, knew from his time as publisher of the New York Observer that the support of the Drudge Report was crucial to his father-in-law\u2019s electoral chances.<br \/>\nBut with only minutes to go until Trump hit the stage for what was expected to be one of the most consequential debates in American political history, a senior staffer asked, \u201cIs there anyone who can pick him out of the crowd?\u201d<br \/>\nDavid Bossie spoke up. \u201cI know what he looks like.\u201d<br \/>\nBossie had met Matt several times in the late 1990s. The two had formed a mutually beneficial relationship over common enemies\u2014Bill and Hillary Clinton. Bossie raced through the underground labyrinth of tunnels beneath the stadium until he emerged through an opening facing the audience. He scanned the crowd. Several rows up he spotted an unshaven man in his early fifties wearing dark glasses and a brown fedora.<br \/>\nIt was Matt Drudge.<\/p>\n<p>* Matthew Nathan Drudge was born on October 28, 1966, the only child of two liberal Democrats, Robert and Deborah Drudge.<\/p>\n<p>* Matt grew up a latchkey kid. He was a contemplative child who was naturally drawn to meditation. Radio was an early passion for young Matt, and at night he narrated his own personal radio shows into a tape recorder before falling asleep to the talk radio voices crackling through the AM stations on his transistor radio.<\/p>\n<p>* Matt would later describe his mother proudly as a \u201cpioneering lawyer\u201d; however, her career stalled just a few years after passing the bar. Following the divorce, Deborah Drudge fell ill, and in January 1980 she was forced to leave her job owing to \u201csevere illness.\u201d<br \/>\nShe became a patient of Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal, who would later become prominent for having been the first to describe seasonal affective disorder and for pioneering the use of light therapy. Dr. Rosenthal prescribed a \u201cradical new treatment\u201d for Deborah that appeared to worsen her condition.<\/p>\n<p>* Court papers reveal that the young man\u2019s issues extended far beyond a rebellious attitude. Matt had been dealing with \u201cemotional problems\u201d since the divorce.<br \/>\n\u201cPhysically he\u2019s in good shape, but emotionally he has problems and he\u2019s getting treatment for that,\u201d Claire told the court. On June 18, 1981, Matt was arrested for making \u201cannoying phone calls.\u201d He was taken to Montgomery County Juvenile Court, where his issues were blamed on his father, who resented him for being \u201cdisturbed.\u201d Coupled with his mother\u2019s health troubles, it was suggested Claire send Matt to a foster home.<br \/>\nThe agonizing situation was described to the court by a relative testifying in support of Claire:<br \/>\nAfter he went to his diagnosis well he got is a problem of making annoying phone calls to a girl, so that\u2019s what precipitated the testing, and as a result of the testing the diagnosis was that the boy was disturbed. Not that he has a mental illness but because of his life situation of his mother\u2019s sickness and his father resents him that he is disturbed and needs treatment, and their recommendation was a boarding school if we could afford it or possibly a foster home if one could be found, that is one of the reasons we are here is for more money to hopefully send him through boarding school and if not the last choice will be a foster home.<\/p>\n<p>* In the early \u201980s, the American media landscape was dominated by the network newscasts and a burgeoning print newspaper market. Newspaper circulation was on an upward trajectory that would continue for the next eight years, with many big-city publications putting out multiple editions per day. The influence of print spread to the network newscasts, with headlines from that morning\u2019s New York Times, Chicago Tribune , and other prominent dailies often used as crib sheets for the producers at ABC, NBC, and CBS, and would later feature as the lead stories for the nightly newscasts. And the Big Three were enjoying a wave of success of their own, riding a formula of viewer trust and familiarity. But a cloud of uncertainty was also hovering forebodingly over this balance of power.<\/p>\n<p>* Newcomer Ted Turner\u2019s twenty-four-hour news station CNN had launched on June 1, 1980.<br \/>\nMeanwhile, across the ocean, Australian newspaper tycoon Rupert Murdoch was spreading his media empire, having just put in bids to purchase the Times and the Sunday Times newspapers in the UK, all the while closely watching the experiment unfolding at CNN.<\/p>\n<p>* The new decade also delivered exciting new advances in technology.<br \/>\nIn San Francisco, a 1981 KRON newscast told the story of a radical experiment happening at the San Francisco Examiner that had the potential to revolutionize how the public gathered news.<br \/>\n\u201cImagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee and turning on your home computer to read the day\u2019s newspaper,\u201d the newscast began. The story continues with a print newspaper subscriber named Richard Halloran, identified by the segment as a \u201chome computer owner.\u201d By placing a simple phone call, Halloran was able to access most of the newspaper without stepping foot outside his front door. \u201cWhen the telephone connection between these two terminals is made, the newest form of electronic journalism lights up Mr. Halloran\u2019s television with just about everything the Examiner prints in its regular edition\u2014that is, with the exception of pictures, ads, and the comics.\u201d<br \/>\nEight newspapers, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, had already joined the computer network, with more joining every week.<br \/>\n\u201cThis is an experiment,\u201d said Examiner editor David Cole. \u201cWe are trying to figure out what this will mean to us as editors and reporters and what it means to the home user . . . And we are not in it to make money. We are probably not going to lose a lot but we are probably not going to make much either.\u201d<br \/>\nThe segment concluded with KRON newscaster Steve Newman presciently saying, \u201cEngineers now predict the day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer, but that\u2019s a few years off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* Matt didn\u2019t participate in extracurricular activities. He didn\u2019t do his homework or go to football games or homecoming dances. He also didn\u2019t join the school newspaper, but a few fellow students recall him reading the morning announcements broadcast over the school loudspeaker, including leading the Pledge of Allegiance. He said stuff to raise eyebrows and be provocative so that he could watch how teachers and other students reacted.<\/p>\n<p>* After school the two usually ended up at Matt\u2019s. His house was striking for its lack of personality and warmth. \u201cThere were no pictures on the wall. There were a few pieces of furniture, but no throw pillows on the couch or anything extra. Just the bare essentials,\u201d Michelle recalls. Matt explained that his mom just hadn\u2019t felt compelled to brighten the house up, telling Michelle that his mother was sad.<br \/>\nMatt\u2019s mom was rarely home, but when she was, Michelle could tell that something was off. Michelle remembers Claire as a smallish, attractive woman with long brown hair parted down the middle, who looked like a hippie but without \u201cthat warm, easygoing hippie vibe.\u201d There was something different about the cadence of her voice and the look in her eye. \u201cShe didn\u2019t seem all there. She seemed to be struggling with something very serious.\u201d When Michelle asked what was wrong, Matt just shrugged his shoulders, explaining that she was \u201cstill upset about the divorce.\u201d<br \/>\nThe other thing Michelle noticed was Matt\u2019s strained relationship with Claire. \u201cMatt didn\u2019t like his mom,\u201d says Michelle. \u201cHe talked down to her. He would sometimes just look at her and say dismissively, \u2018That\u2019s my mother.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On top of not feeling connected to his mom, Matt rarely saw his dad. \u201cExcept for me, Matt was a loner,\u201d says Michelle.<\/p>\n<p>As the relationship evolved, Matt began to use the notes to open up about his sexuality and his relationships with men. It hardly came as a revelation to Michelle.<br \/>\n\u201cMost of the school thought of Matt as gay, so I wasn\u2019t surprised at all. It was really no big deal to me,\u201d says Michelle. \u201cHe was just so out there and never dated any girls, and the way he behaved and the things he would talk about . . . People just weren\u2019t like that back then, especially in a football-oriented school like Northwood.\u201d<br \/>\nWhile unfazed by Matt\u2019s sexuality, Michelle was taken aback by how explicit the notes were in describing the details of his intimate relationships. On the bus rides home from school at the end of the day, Matt demanded that Michelle give him his notes back so he could destroy them.<\/p>\n<p>Matt never dated classmates, but by the age of eighteen had already made himself a staple at the Washington, DC, gay club scene. Matt knew all the doormen, and even though Michelle wasn\u2019t yet of age, he could get her in without a problem.<\/p>\n<p>* At the clubs, Matt met men from all across the country. \u201cMatt always dated older men,\u201d Michelle remembers. \u201cI remember him going down to North Carolina to meet with some man in his fifties. Even though he was still in high school, Matt would fly or take Amtrak to various destinations around the country and even Canada one time. Every year he would travel somewhere. He never told me how he paid to get there, but I always assumed the other person he was meeting was paying.\u201d<br \/>\nMatt never drank or did recreational drugs at the clubs, but his dancing was epic. \u201cMatt would dance the whole time nonstop. It was really remarkable. He would dominate the whole floor. He was that guy on the dance floor that you couldn\u2019t turn your eyes from,\u201d remembers Michelle. \u201cMatt danced in a way I had never seen anyone dance before. He would go from side to side in these huge sweeping motions. He demanded space on the dance floor. You couldn\u2019t stand next to him because he would knock you over. He was incredible. He would dance for hours and hours and come off the floor sopping wet from head to toe.\u201d<br \/>\nOne night Matt left a club late at night to meet up with Michelle, showing up at her door with his left shoe missing.<br \/>\n\u201cMatt, where is your shoe?\u201d she asked.<br \/>\nMatt looked down at his bare sock, then looked back up at her, smiling. \u201cI lost it dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* Behind the scenes, Matt Drudge\u2019s high school years were marked by increasing instability. Matt\u2019s parents had become aware of his sexuality. Matt later confessed to a friend that they didn\u2019t accept his lifestyle, and that they thought something was wrong with him.<\/p>\n<p>* Matt\u2019s \u201cmental health issues\u201d corresponded with the continual deterioration of his mother\u2019s health, according to the Maryland Court Archives. In April 1982 Claire suffered a severe toxic reaction to a medication that caused her to be hospitalized. In June, Claire told the court, \u201cI returned home, where I remain under doctor\u2019s care. I have no financial means with which to meet Matthew\u2019s special and urgent needs.\u201d<br \/>\nWith nowhere left to turn, Claire sent Matt to live with his father in Tyaskin, Maryland, on a soybean farm with his father\u2019s new wife and her two sons. But after three weeks, the teenager was sent back to live with his mom.<br \/>\nAccording to Claire, \u201cRobert Drudge rejected his natural son, Matthew, and returned him to my home, knowing that I am under doctor\u2019s care and unemployed. His reason for returning Matthew to me after three weeks was that his wife comes first; her two boys come second, and Matthew comes third, that he did not assume any responsibility for him as his father because he has a new family; that he hopes everything turns out all right. Robert Drudge has not communicated with his son or me since that time.\u201d<br \/>\nShe continued, \u201cAs a result of these experiences, I believe that Matthew will require special attention in the form of psychiatric and social services as well as social educational services.\u201d<br \/>\nAfter returning back to his mother\u2019s care, records show that his treatments increased. In 1982 Matt received a \u201cpsychological evaluation,\u201d a \u201cpsychiatric evaluation,\u201d and at least twelve \u201cindividual psychotherapy sessions\u201d at the Jewish Social Agency in Rockville, Maryland.<br \/>\nBy September 15, 1982, Matt\u2019s \u201cemotional problems\u201d had escalated. This time Matt was admitted into the facility for an extended stay as part of a psychological evaluation. It concerned Matt\u2019s dad enough to provoke a rare visit.<br \/>\n\u201cMatt told me he had pneumonia and that was the reason he was away,\u201d remembers Michelle.<\/p>\n<p>* Matt would later sum up his time in public education: \u201cI don\u2019t like authority and I didn\u2019t like structure. My expertise in high school was cutting classes. Boy I knew how to do that. I never got caught. I got suspended a few times.\u201d<br \/>\nIn 1984 Matt graduated from Northwood High School ranked 341st out of 355 students.<\/p>\n<p>* One of the female roommates had developed a crush on Matt, and the feelings weren\u2019t mutual. And as tensions in the apartment began to rise, Matt found himself in a relationship with a man he had met in New York City, and it had turned abusive.<br \/>\n\u201cMatt kept what was going on to himself, but we knew it wasn\u2019t good,\u201d a friend remembers.<br \/>\nMatt had nowhere to turn. His mom was struggling with mental illness, and his dad had all but disowned him. Michelle hadn\u2019t heard from Matt in several months. She had become worried and decided to reach out. Matt answered the phone, sounding panicked.<br \/>\n\u201cHey, I\u2019ve been trying to reach you. How are you doing, Matt?\u201d she asked.<br \/>\nMatt answered, \u201cWell, I\u2019m getting my ass beat by my boyfriend, and I have no place to go. So that\u2019s about it, so, bye.\u201d<br \/>\nHe hung up on her.<br \/>\nAfter just a few months, Matt fled the New York City apartment in the middle of the night. He didn\u2019t tell anyone, not even Seymour, where he was going.<br \/>\nSeymour recalls, \u201cWe just woke up and Matt was gone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* In 1987 Matt moved again, this time leaving Takoma Park for Los Angeles, where he found a small one-bedroom apartment for $600 in a section of Hollywood \u201cthey\u2019re always promising to clean up but never do.\u201d He adopted a six-toed cat named Cutie. From his ninth-floor apartment at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, Matt found himself in the entertainment capital of the universe . . . with a view of CNN\u2019s local headquarters and the high-rise where E! Entertainment\u2019s offices were located.<br \/>\nMatt\u2019s goal in Los Angeles was the same as it had been in New York City. He knew he had ability. He believed he understood more about the entertainment agency than the writers covering the beat, so now all he needed was for someone to notice.<br \/>\nHe walked the famed Sunset Strip, sometimes stopping at Ronald Reagan\u2019s brass star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to wipe the epithets off, or at World Book &#038; News at the corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga to note any interesting tidbits. One day, while perusing the news rack, Matt spotted an advertisement in Variety for a job as a runner for the game show The Price Is Right. He interviewed and got the job. The pay was five dollars an hour.<br \/>\nThe job proved fortuitous. Not only did it earn him enough money to pay his rent and afford his steady diet of thirty-nine-cent tacos, but it also gave him his first real glimpse into Hollywood. And Matt was finally being noticed. He soon impressed his bosses at the game show and was promoted to the CBS Studios gift shop. Once there, he was bumped up the ladder again, this time to assistant manager, where he became responsible for all the books and purchasing. The higher-ups were so enamored of his work ethic that they flew him from Hollywood to New York City to show CBS\u2019s New York employees how to expertly manage their store.<\/p>\n<p>* Matt\u2019s father, Robert, had married for a third time in 1989, this time to a woman named Rita Foust, also a Maryland native. Rita recalls that during their two years of marriage Robert didn\u2019t have a single interaction with Matt. She says she never asked Robert why the two never spoke, only that \u201cit was a very strange family. Very reclusive.\u201d<br \/>\nBut Robert did have a fixation that he would soon share with his son\u2014computers. He had bought one in 1991 and had \u201cspent hours messing around on it,\u201d according to Rita. \u201cHe got very into it,\u201d she says. \u201cHe took up programming and writing code and became very good at it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By early 1994 Robert Drudge had reconnected with his son, paying a visit to his Los Angeles apartment. He became convinced that Matt was spinning his wheels at his gift shop gig. Robert hoped to jump-start his son\u2019s career, and possibly provide an outlet for him to focus his seemingly boundless energy and intellect.<br \/>\n\u201cMatt\u2019s mind goes a thousand beats a second and then the next second there\u2019s something else,\u201d Robert would later say.<br \/>\nOn the drive back to the airport after his visit, \u201csensing some action was needed,\u201d Robert made a detour to a strip mall off Sunset Boulevard. It was there that he purchased his son his first computer, a $1,500 486 Packard Bell. He thought it would be good for Matt to apply his mind to something new and different.<br \/>\n\u201cOh yeah,\u201d Matt thought. \u201cWhat am I gonna do with that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* But it was 1920s-era columnist Walter Winchell who would become Matt\u2019s biggest influence. Winchell had made a name for himself by printing private, often salacious, information about famous people for the struggling New York Evening Graphic. <\/p>\n<p>* Matt would later acknowledge the columnist\u2019s influence, but with a caveat: \u201cTo me it\u2019s only the Winchell spirit that I\u2019m gravitating toward, as opposed to the man. He put himself in the center of situations. I do just the opposite. I remove myself from the fray and monitor everything from above.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* In July 1997 Matt stopped by Brock\u2019s house to celebrate his thirty-fifth birthday holding a bouquet of yellow roses. \u201cJesus, I thought, Drudge thinks we\u2019re going on a date,\u201d Brock would later write of the incident in Blinded by the Right, which detailed his departure from the conservative movement.<\/p>\n<p>Brock\u2019s account continued, \u201cAfter dinner at the famed West Hollywood restaurant Dan Tana\u2019s, he suggested we go bar hopping along the gay strip on Santa Monica Boulevard, which Drudge navigated like a pro. At a bar called Rage I accepted his invitation to dance, but I was much more interested in checking out two guys who were dancing nearby. When the couple disappeared, I asked Drudge if he had seen where the pair had gone. \u2018Yeah,\u2019 Drudge quacked, \u2018I saw what was going on and I stepped on one of their feet really hard to get rid of them.\u2019 The gesture was sweet, in a way, but also scary, and I quickly called it a night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Brock claimed he soon received an email saying, \u201cLaura [Ingraham] spreading stuff about you and me being fuck buddies. I should be so lucky.\u201d Brock decided it was time to unceremoniously end his relationship with Matt.<\/p>\n<p>* Longtime conservative operative Barbara Ledeen couldn\u2019t believe her eyes when the man showed up at her door with an order for her to appear in court as a witness in a lawsuit between Sidney Blumenthal and Matt Drudge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t know Matt Drudge,\u201d said Ledeen. \u201cBut I knew enough to know that we needed help.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ledeen and her husband, author Michael Ledeen, may have never met Matt, but they had more than enough experience with Blumenthal, whom they described as \u201cvicious\u201d and \u201cvindictive\u201d for his attacks on their conservative advocacy work. After receiving the subpoena at their home asking them to turn over \u201call kinds of information,\u201d Leeden called her friend, libertarian activist David Horowitz.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have to help Matt Drudge,\u201d she said to Horowitz.<\/p>\n<p>Horowitz, who had founded the libertarian Individual Rights Foundation, had never met Matt, either, but after being contacted by Ledeen, Horowitz believed it was a noble cause. Horowitz agreed to allow his foundation, which mainly fought speech codes on college campuses, to represent Matt\u2019s defense.<\/p>\n<p>Horowitz remembered, \u201cMatt and I had breakfast. At the time I don\u2019t think he realized or appreciated the real danger he was in with this lawsuit. The goal was to destroy Drudge, and even if Blumenthal knew he couldn\u2019t win the case, he could easily drain Drudge dry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe grudgingly accepted our help,\u201d added Horowitz.<\/p>\n<p>With Matt\u2019s permission, Horowitz went to work creating a defense fund, which raised money through direct mail and internet appeals to pay the lawyers\u2019 fees. He then set up a meeting with Matt and Individual Rights Foundation lawyers Manny Klausner and Patrick Manshardt. Manshardt was excited to take the case, seeing Matt Drudge, and all the Drudge Report represented, as important for the future of internet freedom.<\/p>\n<p>* On October 8, 1997, [George] Conway reportedly emailed Matt again, introducing himself as \u201ca friend of Laura\u201d with an \u201cexclusive\u201d about Paula Jones\u2019s claim (which was later dropped) that the \u201cdistinguishing characteristic\u201d of the president\u2019s anatomy was a curvature caused by a malady known as Peyronie\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n<p>* Lucianne Goldberg advised Linda Tripp to reach out to Michael Isikoff in late September, asking him if he would be willing to meet at the walk-up condo of Goldberg\u2019s son, Jonah. Isikoff showed up at the Manhattan apartment on October 6, where he found Goldberg and Tripp waiting with a tape player in hand. Goldberg told him they had the Lewinsky tapes and suggested that Isikoff listen.<\/p>\n<p>Isikoff politely declined, answering, \u201cAs a journalist, it would put me in a bad position to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In point of fact, the seasoned reporter was worried that by listening to part of the tapes he would be inserting himself into the story. Isikoff remembers, \u201cThere were pretty strong guidelines that you don\u2019t get involved. That is a violation. There were strict guidelines handed down. That was the culture I was raised in. It was a sort of seat of the pants split second. It was pretty clear this was an ongoing process\u2014they were trying to get me to coach them. It appeared to be an effort to make me a part of something that I was ethically obligated to stay out of.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They spent the next hour talking and then gave Isikoff the name of the other woman: Monica Lewinsky. Again, Goldberg insisted he listen to the tapes. Tripp reached for the recorder and pushed the play button.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWait,\u201d said Isikoff. \u201cI\u2019m not sure I should be doing his. It probably isn\u2019t a good idea for me to listen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tripp hit stop on the tape player. Whatever was on the tapes, Isikoff told them, he would need more corroboratory documentation if he was going to write an article alleging that the president of the United States was having an affair with an intern. He assured them he would keep working, and then left the apartment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe ran out of there,\u201d recalls Goldberg. \u201cI think he had a car waiting for him outside to take him to appear on Hardball.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over the next several weeks, Tripp and Goldberg continued to stay in touch with Isikoff, feeding him information and waiting for the story to break. But as the days went by, Goldberg\u2019s crew was growing impatient.<\/p>\n<p>Since the first day of his presidency, conservatives had been trying to prove Clinton was corrupt and unfit for office, but every time they thought they had him, the football would be yanked back and they would be left tumbling through the air catching nothing but wind. But this time, they believed it would be different.<\/p>\n<p>The day before Clinton was to give a sworn deposition, Paula Jones\u2019s legal team was notified of the tapes and their content. On January 17, 1998, Clinton gave a sworn deposition denying having a \u201csexual relationship,\u201d \u201csexual affair,\u201d or \u201csexual relations\u201d with Lewinsky.<\/p>\n<p>The president\u2019s sworn testimony directly contradicted the information on the tapes. They finally had him, they thought. Now they needed to get the information out. And fast.<\/p>\n<p>On the evening of January 17, Isikoff called Moody and Goldberg to let them know the story wouldn\u2019t be running. The editors at Newsweek made the decision that the taped conversations amounted to hearsay and were not enough to publish a story that could lead to the impeachment of the president.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIsikoff was very excited,\u201d recalls Goldberg.<\/p>\n<p>For Goldberg, it was more evidence of the leftist media protecting their own. She was determined to make sure the story wouldn\u2019t get squashed. A friend suggested she call Matt Drudge.<\/p>\n<p>Matt had been following the Clinton case closely with a member of Goldberg\u2019s inner circle having already leaked bits and pieces of the story, but now, for the first time, he was hearing the entire story\u2014along with Newsweek\u2019s role.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI did know Matt Drudge, but I hadn\u2019t met him. And I was with friends who trusted him. And there was no other place to go. Isikoff had been fiddling for months. My friends told me, \u2018Hey, you should call Drudge.\u2019 So that is what I did. I picked up the phone, called Matt Drudge, and gave him the story,\u201d says Goldberg.<\/p>\n<p>It was shortly before 10:00 p.m., eastern time, when Goldberg picked up the phone to dial Matt in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n<p>In Goldberg\u2019s words, \u201cI began to tell Matt the story and he was like a kid in a candy store. Drudge loved it. He was like, \u2018Oh, boy this is great.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Less than an hour later, Goldberg got a call that the story had been posted on the Drudge Report. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe how quickly it went up. I said, \u2018You watch, this will change journalism forever.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* Having published [the Clinton-Lewinsky story], Matt Drudge sat alone in his Hollywood apartment. He began sobbing. He realized that from that moment forward his life was never going to be the same.<\/p>\n<p>* In the months that followed, the historic weight of what he had done set in on Matt. He began to believe that he was in danger and that something nefarious could happen to him. If ever the Clinton deep state, which he had spent years obsessing over, had a reason to spring to life\u2014this was it.<\/p>\n<p>Was he being followed? At times he believed he was.<\/p>\n<p>Had his computer been hacked? He didn\u2019t think so\u2014but he told friends that he was sure someone had tried.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe, he thought, the police would come barging into his Hollywood apartment with a warrant for his arrest for some trumped-up charges? He told friends he worried that one day he would arrive at his car to find it surrounded by police after someone had planted a bag of cocaine in the trunk.<\/p>\n<p>His attorney Patrick Manshardt remembers, \u201cDrudge seemed more worried that the powers that be would do something terrible to him\u2014arrest him, eliminate him, frame him. That seemed to be his concern. He was concerned there was some sort of deep state action that would be used against him. He was serious.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* After the speech and Q&#038;A had concluded, [Doug] Harbrecht [of the Washington Press Club] retreated to his upstairs office where he quickly discovered how the public had felt about his job performance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt immediately began,\u201d recalls Harbrecht, who for the first time had found himself being labeled unfair and biased for his treatment of Matt. \u201cWe started getting emails from all over the country. That was when I found out what the meaning of the word \u2018troll\u2019 was. I got slammed, right down to my aunt and uncle. Rush Limbaugh spent time on his radio show laying into me. I would prove a perfect elitist foil.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMatt Drudge\u2019s speech became the most commented event that the Press Club had ever had, but it wasn\u2019t until five years later that I read that speech and realized how brilliant it was,\u201d Harbrecht adds.<\/p>\n<p>As members of the news media slowly filtered out of the room, they were accompanied by a cascade of murmurs and sly grins. These were men and women with journalism degrees from some of the most prestigious schools in the country and working for some of the most hallowed media institutions in the world. For generations, they had built their reputation as guardians of information who sought accountability from the powerful, and in their eyes, had more than proved their worth several times over. From Watergate, to the Pentagon Papers, to the Iran\u2013Contra affair, they took their oath to uphold the public trust as sacrosanct.<\/p>\n<p>Now, in a single speech, this Matt Drudge, an uneducated interloper, had looked them in the eye and rendered their entire world irrelevant. To those assembled, the speech and Matt\u2019s vision of the future was as arrogant as it was obnoxious. And most important, it was wrong. As far as they were concerned, the newspapers and network news were at the top of their game, and they weren\u2019t about to go anywhere. If anything, they were growing. However, this new fad of internet news was nothing but a flash in the pan, most believed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEnjoy your fifteen minutes,\u201d a Washington Post reporter was heard laughing before walking out the door.<\/p>\n<p>* New opportunities begat more new opportunities. In one example, a New York brokerage firm offered to put up millions of dollars to finance an online venture with Matt and former Clinton pollster Dick Morris. Matt refused, telling friends he was already financially comfortable. He had moved on from his old Packard Bell to a new black Fujitsu laptop, traded his beat-up Geo Metro for a Corvette, and upgraded his cramped ninth-floor Hollywood apartment for a luxury apartment on Whitley Avenue between Highland and Vine.<\/p>\n<p>Heading for dinner one night, Matt handed Ann Coulter two hundred-dollar bills to pay the taxi driver and told her to keep the change.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s constantly giving money away,\u201d the conservative columnist said in an interview with the Washington Post. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t know what to do now that he\u2019s making money. It\u2019s hilarious . . . He\u2019s simultaneously larger than life and sort of childlike,\u201d said Coulter. \u201cWhen you ride in the Drudgemobile, he\u2019ll play tapes of himself on the radio, and he\u2019ll laugh uproariously at his answers. You end up laughing at him laughing at himself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* More bad news came after Matt learned that MSNBC reporter Jeannette Walls had begun research for an upcoming book that promised \u201ca comprehensive, serious exploration of gossip and its social, historical, and political significance,\u201d and a look into the major players, including Matt Drudge.<\/p>\n<p>For years, Matt\u2019s private life had become the subject of online \u201crumor campaigns\u201d in internet chat rooms. \u201cThey\u2019re spreading that I\u2019m a child molester, I\u2019m gay, I\u2019ve been mentally institutionalized . . . even rumors of drug use and pornography,\u201d he told the Washington Post. \u201cAll the charges and counter charges on me at some point become just a blur.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A source had informed Matt that Walls\u2019s book planned to out him to the public and his conservative audience. Matt fired off a preemptive attack on March 3, 2000, posting an all-caps headline: \u201cMSNBC REPORTER: DRUDGE HAD SEX WITH EGGS.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The article continued, \u201cMSNBC reporter Jeannette Walls is telling associates that she has obtained information linking Matt Drudge with a sexual preference for eggs. \u2018He likes to have sex with eggs,\u2019 Walls told an insider. \u2018He likes them smeared all over naked male bodies.\u2019 Yet another MSNBC exclusive, Walls is also reporting to MSNBC associates that Drudge likes to \u2018have sex, with his clothes on, in the shower.\u2019 Do you have any other Drudge sex stories?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On March 7, 2000, Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip was released with the opening chapter, \u201cCitizen Reporter,\u201d divulging modest details of Matt\u2019s homosexual lifestyle, albeit without any mention of eggs.<\/p>\n<p>New York Daily News gossip columnist George Rush called Matt for comment. \u201cYou are in this book and the author suggested that you are gay,\u201d Rush told Matt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was quite defensive and denied it,\u201d said Rush, who had first met Matt in March 1997 at a party at the Chateau Marmont.<\/p>\n<p>Rush called Walls to let her know that Matt denied the claims made in Dish. In response, the author forwarded Rush an email thread she had obtained between Matt and one of his alleged lovers that showed proof of a physical relationship. Rush reached back out to Matt with the evidence, but when confronted with the email, Matt went into overdrive to discredit the reporter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, that\u2019s fake,\u201d said Matt. \u201cAnyone can fake an email by copy and pasting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He then changed the heading on Rush\u2019s email and sent it back to him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSee,\u201d he said. \u201cEasy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Matt went on to claim Walls\u2019s entire account was fabricated. \u201cJeannette, dear, slow down and come up for some air,\u201d he wrote on his site. \u201cYou are becoming a laughingstock. Even by MSNBC standards.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Replied Walls, \u201cI\u2019m not passing judgment. But I think his duplicity is relevant to his character as someone who has built his career on exposing others\u2019 private lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI go to bars,\u201d he later told the Miami New Times. \u201cI go to straight bars, I go to gay bars. [Walls] never said there was sex; she said there was dating. She never had enough to go that far.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asked if it bothered him to be portrayed as gay, Matt answered, \u201cNo, because I\u2019m not . . . It\u2019s not an issue with me . . . I think I told the Daily News something like, \u201cMy youth is a blur. That\u2019s a good out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Matt again found himself on the defensive after an avalanche of negative reviews greeted the October 2000 publication of his book, Drudge Manifesto. It had been hyped as \u201cthe most sensational, the most outspoken, behind-the-scenes story of the year,\u201d but critics gleefully slammed the 247-page book, which included forty blank pages, thirty-one pages of fan mail, and nine pages of poetry.<\/p>\n<p>A particularly brutal Wired reviewer wrote, \u201cDrudge spends so much time assuring us that he deserves to be taken seriously, it\u2019s only natural to come to the opposite conclusion. He deserves to be taken as seriously as the crud on the bottom of your shoe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jack Shafer wrote for the Wall Street Journal, \u201cMr. Drudge attempts to chronicle his pioneering internet life and times in Drudge Manifesto. But I can\u2019t really recommend. His collection. Of sentence fragments. To anybody seeking an intelligible account of. How Drudge. Gave American journalism. A much-needed kick in the tuchas. Besides Mr. Drudge\u2019s sentence-fragment tic, he RunsWordsTogetherForDramaticEffect as if under the spell of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, making readers struggle to follow his tale.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* But Matt\u2019s friends began to wonder [by 2001] if something was wrong. They worried that what used to be small glimpses of paranoia were taking a greater hold of Matt\u2019s psyche. It didn\u2019t help that the Drudge Report tip box had become riddled with hate. He claimed some people wanted him dead. Other messages referenced his sexuality.<\/p>\n<p>After an eavesdropper spotted him in a Los Angeles coffee shop and fed an item on his private conversation to the New York Post, Matt began to think there were spies everywhere.<\/p>\n<p>In another example, a camera crew took to the roof of an adjacent building to shoot into Matt\u2019s apartment. Matt vented to friends that the Clinton people would never let it go.<\/p>\n<p>* After spending the two years following his Lewinsky scoop frequenting the interview circuit, friends at the time recall a difference in Matt. His need to be reclusive intensified. He had cut down on his public appearances. He was slower to respond to longtime friends on AOL Instant Messenger. On the increasingly rare occasions Matt did talk to the public, he refused to divulge any details about his life. What started off as a quirk in his personality was now becoming his personality.<\/p>\n<p>Picking up on the changes, Paglia asked, \u201cYou\u2019ve been guarded about your personal life, and rarely make the usual media rounds. Why do you stay so mysterious?\u201d Matt deflected from the question. \u201cMy private life would make my public persona a lot less interesting . . . Once you take the mask off Batman he seems a bit diminished.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Breitbart was also starting to ask questions. He was helping to run one of the most influential websites in the world, still helming the nine-to-three shift like clockwork, but months would pass without any communication from his boss.<\/p>\n<p>Breitbart\u2019s friend, conservative talk show host John Ziegler, recalls the confusion. \u201cAndrew was both mystified and amazed. Here he was, one of two people running one of the most incredibly powerful enterprises in the world, and they never spoke,\u201d says Ziegler. \u201cIt was very, very rare for Drudge to communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes Breitbart would get an out-of-the-blue message from Matt that he would be gone for several days. When he asked where Matt was traveling to, he would be met with radio silence. \u201cAt one point Andrew thought he was in Europe. But he was always guessing,\u201d adds Ziegler.<\/p>\n<p>The one surefire way to get Matt\u2019s attention was to miss a big breaking news story. Ziegler reflects, \u201cIf Andrew ever fell asleep at the wheel, Drudge would get really pissed at him and fire off a curt message.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Despite the lack of communication, Breitbart continued working his morning shift with a religious fervor, waking up most days at 6:00 a.m., and then furiously alternating his attention between television news and the wire services, bouncing between different websites, all the while staying on top of emails and the Drudge Report tip box.<\/p>\n<p>Breitbart once explained to Roger Simon, the author and creator of PJ Media, the conservative opinion and commentary blog, that he always needed to be plugged in because the secret to the Drudge Report\u2019s success was speed. Even seconds mattered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAndrew had figured out how to get the early line for AP,\u201d said Simon. \u201cWhen AP was breaking, Andrew and Matt were jumping on AP faster than other people. That was part of their original plan. Speed was very important to them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, the tension from always having to be plugged in was taking its toll on Breitbart, recalls Ziegler: \u201cIt was incredibly stressful. He felt like a goalkeeper. Just making sure nothing got past him. Andrew had to be wired in all the time. If he was going into his sports bar, he would be watching the Dodgers game while monitoring news.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Stress over finances was also beginning to take its toll on Breitbart. He had long recognized the mistake he had made in turning down Matt\u2019s offer to be a partner in the Drudge Report. It cost him millions of dollars, but the monthly personal checks from Matt were barely enough to cover Andrew\u2019s expenses.<\/p>\n<p>A friend of Breitbart\u2019s remembers, \u201cAndrew couldn\u2019t figure it out. There was no reason for it. Sometimes he\u2019d be killing it with traffic and the site would be making millions and millions of dollars and a check for just a few thousand dollars would show up in the mail.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His friends encouraged him to confront Matt to demand an increase in pay and a contract, but Breitbart was reluctant. Matt\u2019s increasingly reclusive behavior had made him nearly unapproachable. According to Ziegler, \u201cIn Andrew\u2019s mind, it was as if Drudge had become this Howard Hughes kind of character.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* By the mid-2000s, South Florida had become a small enclave for conservative leaders. In 2003 Matt\u2019s circle of friends had continued to dwindle, but one relationship he kept was with conservative commentator Ann Coulter, who became his neighbor, moving into a penthouse in the same building.<\/p>\n<p>Matt and Coulter would sometimes visit Rush Limbaugh\u2019s gated oceanfront compound in Palm Beach, staying in one of his five guest-houses. Limbaugh\u2019s brother, David, would occasionally help Matt with legal work.<\/p>\n<p>Chris Ruddy, who had become inspired by Matt during their dinner together in the mid-1990s, had also planted his growing conservative media empire in Florida. After hearing Matt describe the scope of the Drudge Report\u2019s readership during their dinner together in 1994, Ruddy went to his boss, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review publisher Richard Mellon Scaife, and proposed starting an internet newspaper.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI saw the power and influence that he [Matt] had developed on the internet. He was a genius. I thought I could turn it into a business model,\u201d says Ruddy. Scaife declined. Ruddy left the Tribune-Review and took stories that were not published online, printed them out, and began setting up an email list for distribution. Before long, he had ten thousand subscribers paying thirty dollars a year. That success led him to begin the conservative website Newsmax in 1998. Five years later, Newsmax was flourishing. Ruddy set up headquarters in West Palm Beach with a massive $8.55 million, 61,900-square-foot office building.<\/p>\n<p>Ruddy was joined in South Florida by conservative headliners such as former secretary of education Bill Bennett, former Reagan adviser Larry Kudlow, and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Gay Gaines, a longtime GOP political operative, would host fundraisers where Limbaugh, Bennett, Kudlow, Gingrich, and other GOP bold names would stay up until two in the morning partying. Matt was always invited, but never came.<\/p>\n<p>* In August 2002, actor Alec Baldwin told the Howard Stern Show that Matt had hit on him in a \u201ccreepy\u201d way after a chance meeting in a hallway at ABC Studios.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe came right up to me and he looked like he had a fork and knife in each of his hands. He said, \u2018Do you have any Tabasco sauce? I want to drizzle it all over you,\u2019\u201d said Baldwin.<\/p>\n<p>* A revealing New York magazine piece written by Philip Weiss, published on August 24, 2007, further stoked Matt\u2019s paranoia. In the article, Weiss used quotes from Matt\u2019s radio show, giving the story the feel of an interview. Twenty-four hours after the story hit the web, Matt removed the link to his radio show entirely from the Drudge Report. Ten days later, it was announced that a new anchor had been hired for the 325 stations that broadcast his Sunday night show and that Matt would soon be quitting.<\/p>\n<p>A few days after the story was published Matt met up for drinks with a work-related acquaintance and confided that he was ready to go completely off the grid. \u201cI\u2019m thinking of just going dark. So there is no longer a face to the Drudge Report,\u201d he said. \u201cThis page would do better if I disappear. If I don\u2019t exist. If there is no target.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* After arriving at the building, Matt first stopped at his mailbox in the lobby and pulled out a thick pile of mail. He told [Tracy] Sefl it was all lawsuits. He couldn\u2019t care less. It was such a constant for him. \u201cThat was his life: come home, open the mail, chuck the lawsuits over on the counter,\u201d said Sefl.<\/p>\n<p>The apartment was sparse, sleek, and modern, with a refrigerator filled with cases of Diet Pepsi.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was very flattered that he invited me into his home. That spoke volumes. He once told me I was only the third woman, the first being his mother, the second being Ann Coulter, who had ever been inside,\u201d says Sefl. \u201cThat\u2019s not a list I ever thought I\u2019d be on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* Breitbart\u2019s morning shift for the Drudge Report was all consuming. Even while on the road for the book tour, Breitbart had to stay plugged in to the website. Matt was even more obsessive than he was, according to Breitbart, but shared that he did have at least one vice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMatt was a big gambler,\u201d says Ebner. \u201cHe liked to go down to the seediest casinos, the ones that were off-strip. He would go and play the high-end slots. The hundred-dollar slots. He would sit there for hours pulling the lever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* Hollywood, Interrupted had further launched Breitbart\u2019s profile into the public sector among the conservative base. But his growing name recognition and his bestselling book weren\u2019t enough to pull him out of the financial debt he had accumulated from a series of costly home renovations and other expenses. The personal checks sent monthly from Matt\u2019s personal checking account no longer sufficed.<\/p>\n<p>After the 2004 election Breitbart was approached by Arianna Huffington to be one of four partners to help launch a new website, the Huffington Post.<\/p>\n<p>* A friend of Breitbart\u2019s recalls the conflicted feelings Breitbart had over the thought of parting ways with the Drudge Report: \u201cBreitbart had high anxiety about going to the Huffington Post, but he needed the money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Breitbart rationalized that if he handled the blog side and stayed away from news aggregation then he wouldn\u2019t be directly competing with the Drudge Report, and would, in turn, manage to avoid Matt\u2019s wrath. Breitbart held his breath and took the plunge, telling friends, \u201cI think it will be okay with Matt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On April 25, 2005, the New York Times ran a piece that stated, in part, that the Huffington Post was a direct challenge to the Drudge Report. \u201cIn fact,\u201d the story stated, \u201cshe has hired away Mr. Drudge\u2019s right-hand Web whiz, Andrew Breitbart, who used to be her researcher.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The reporter reached out to Matt, who emailed back that he was \u201cexcited\u201d for Huffington. \u201cThe internet is still in its infancy,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s wide open.\u201d But privately, Matt was seething.<\/p>\n<p>* Shortly after the Huffington Post launched on May 9, 2005, the website not only took a leftward tilt but also heavily relied on news aggregation, making it a clear and direct competitor to Drudge. The relationship soured. By that June, Breitbart was out. He made another disastrous business decision when he decided to take a small buyout instead of the percentage he was originally promised, which would have been worth millions if Breitbart had waited.<\/p>\n<p>Breitbart went back to work for Matt, knowing that he wasn\u2019t going to pay him more, but offering \u201cfour or five ideas on how to make money.\u201d Idea number one was to buy a subscription to the newswire services. To Breitbart, it made perfect sense. On any given week the Drudge Report would link to hundreds of wire stories, sending traffic, along with the advertising revenue that accompanied it, to third parties. If they bought into the wires, Breitbart reasoned, that money could be kept in-house.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe idea was to have ten wire services and have them all under Breitbart.com,\u201d says a friend of Breitbart\u2019s. \u201cIf you were someone who wanted to be inside the news, this would be the ultimate news junkie page.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Matt shot the idea down, telling Breitbart, \u201cThen the Drudge Report would become a business, and the Drudge Report will never be a business.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Breitbart came back with a counteroffer: What if he fronted the money himself to buy the wires under his name? Would Matt then agree to allow him to link to the wires he owned?<\/p>\n<p>Matt signed off on the deal. Breitbart moved forward with purchasing a subscription to the wire services, telling friends he took out loans totaling $150,000 for the subscription. In the summer of 2005, he launched Breitbart.com, \u201cproviding up-to-the-minute wire service stories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Publicly, Breitbart said that he \u201cwanted to create the single best place where I could go as an avid news reader to get headlines the second they hit the internet so I don\u2019t have to go to forty sites.\u201d When asked if there had been an agreement with the Drudge Report, Breitbart told reporters, \u201cI\u2019m grateful for the traffic that is sent my way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The new arrangement would dramatically change the composition of the Drudge Report. On August 17, 2005, Breitbart.com went live. On August 29, 2005, Breitbart peppered the Drudge Report with links from Breitbart.com forty-eight times, according to an analysis by Kalev Leetaru, a researcher at the University of Illinois Cline Center for Democracy. By flooding the Drudge Report with links to Breitbart\u2019s wire page, Breitbart.com went from obscurity to boasting 2.64 million unique visitors in its first month of operation, according to Nielsen\/NetRatings.<\/p>\n<p>Publicly, Matt said he was happy to assist his friend, telling CNET News, \u201cFor the wire stories, I\u2019ve always looked for places with low graphics, without a lot of spinning Java tops on them . . . When I send my readers someplace, I want it to be convenient for them to get there.\u201d He added, \u201cI want to help him out. He has always wanted to do this. This is his idea and hopefully he can make a living from it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Breitbart had other revenue ideas. He entered into a pay-per-click financial arrangement with Reuters that further altered the page. From January 1, 2005, to October 14, 2005, the Drudge Report linked just twenty-nine times to Reuters. In the period following the deal, from October 15, 2005, to December 31, 2005, the Drudge Report linked to Reuters.com 229 times.<\/p>\n<p>Each Reuters link was embedded with an HTML tag that allowed the news agency to track how much revenue Breitbart had been generating by the traffic sent their way. While Matt never explicitly said that Breitbart wasn\u2019t allowed to use the coded links, he voiced his displeasure in other ways.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDrudge didn\u2019t like it,\u201d says Ziegler. \u201cHe would go on and replace the coded links with links that had no code. It made Andrew furious. Matt was so passive-aggressive. Breitbart would be like, \u2018That bastard did it again! That bastard took down my links!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t the only pay-for-play arrangement. On January 26, 2006, Breitbart and his wife were sued by the Minnesota-based internet advertising firm Gen Ads for $75,000 for allegedly being in violation of their own agreement to take advantage of Drudge Report traffic. The court papers outlined a process of how Breitbart was able to manipulate the Drudge Report website to line his own pockets. According to court documents, after the August 2005 launch, Breitbart.com almost immediately became one of the most trafficked sites on the internet, with 2.64 million visits in its first month of operation. Nearly all the traffic originated from his own referrals while helming the Drudge Report.<\/p>\n<p>The advertising agency was happy with the traffic until it learned that Breitbart had broken the agreement by promoting a third party: \u201cIn November 2005, Gen Ads learned that BL had entered into an advertising agreement with Reuters, a third party, for the placement of multiple links on the Breitbart Site to promote the Reuters site.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIndeed, Andrew was negotiating the agreement to place Reuters Advertising at the time he was negotiating the Advertising Agreement and LLC Agreement with Gen Ads.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In other words, financial arrangements for posting a story on a news site raised ethical concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Journalist Greg Beato describes the arrangement as a black eye for Matt. \u201cDrudge really used to emphasize his editorial independence. So the fact that there were these seemingly paid editorial links to Reuters.com on DrudgeReport.com looked like an ethical breach to me. Basically, it was pay-to-play.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Breitbart had expected to cash in on the deal, but instead, he told friends the legal battle put him $300,000 in debt.<\/p>\n<p>* However, in a conversation with Chris Ruddy, a despondent Breitbart opened up about why he left the website he had helped build. \u201cHe said he had broken a lot of stories for Matt and never felt he got the full credit he deserved,\u201d recalls Ruddy.<\/p>\n<p>Unbeknownst to Matt, Breitbart had been privately plotting to directly compete with his mentor. He had been thinking about an idea to create a home page that could not only gather views independent of Matt but would also confront the conservative kingpin head-on. \u201cMatt will never allow another home page to be created in a conservative space that could actually compete with Drudge,\u201d Breitbart would tell friends. \u201cNever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* In May 2011, Matt brought veteran journalist and Washington Times reporter Charles Hurt into the fold. The trio had the website humming like never before. During his five- to six-hour shifts, Curl would replace 50 to 75 percent of everything on the page with fresher and newer stories. At noon, Hurt would come and take off the rest of the old stuff. Then at 6:00 p.m., Matt took over and worked until 11:00 p.m. or later.<\/p>\n<p>By the time Curl got back behind the wheel the next morning, about 25 percent of the stories he had posted were still standing. Those would be the first he would take off. Then the cycle restarted. Over the course of twenty-four hours, there would be up to 150 links flowing on and off the page.<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks before the 2012 election, and just as the news cycle was heating up, Matt announced to a small group of people that he would be leaving the country. When asked where he was going, Matt wouldn\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n<p>Matt had ended his embargo on Breitbart links, but the bad blood continued. In early 2012, after Breitbart completed the first draft of his book Righteous Indignation, which included an entire chapter about the near-decade period of his life he had spent working on the Drudge Report, he called Matt ahead of publication to give him a heads-up about the book and the passage about their time together. Breitbart explained how the chapter would be an ode to the Drudge Report, with fawning praise for Matt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want you to pull the chapter,\u201d Matt told him. \u201cAll of it.\u201d Breitbart said, \u201cBut this is part of my life. I spent ten years with you. I can\u2019t just pretend like it never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Matt wouldn\u2019t budge\u2014or read the chapter. Breitbart did as Matt asked and pulled the chapter. \u201cAndrew was hurt,\u201d a friend remembers.<\/p>\n<p>In February 2012 at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Curl met up with Breitbart, where the two briefly discussed the unique nature of working for Matt Drudge. \u201cIt\u2019s the weirdest job in the world,\u201d Breitbart told him. \u201cYou\u2019ll never talk to your boss\u2014and no one will tell you what to do. It\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* In January 2016 Matt gave away the 4,600-square-foot house that he had paid $700,000 cash for in January 2013. He surrendered the property to a man with whom he had shared the same addresses since 2004 for a total of $10, according to Miami-Dade County property records. The house had been stockpiled with survivalist stuff, according to a friend.<\/p>\n<p>Matt told his neighbor Kevin Tomlinson, whom he befriended in Florida, that he needed to keep moving because he \u201cbelieved that he was always being watched. That people were out to get him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tomlinson adds, \u201cMatt thought there were eyes everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In one instance, Matt told Tomlinson he had been chased by the Clintons. Another time he said, \u201cThey are stalking me, so I\u2019m hiding out in Poland.\u201d He would say, \u201cThey are watching me. They know where I\u2019m at. They are going to see the cars I\u2019m driving and get my plates.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was worried about him,\u201d added Tomlinson. \u201cI still am.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In March 2015 Matt had bought a home in Arizona, spending $1.9 million in cash for a 2,939-square-foot bunker-like compound in the desert outside Phoenix. A neighbor says the house has remained so quiet, he isn\u2019t sure anyone ever moved in.<\/p>\n<p>Matt would spend a month living out of a cabana at the MGM in Vegas. Next, he would travel to Tel Aviv or Helsinki for two weeks. Then he\u2019d spend a week in Washington, DC, followed by a month in Australia.<\/p>\n<p>*  Matt shouldn\u2019t expect recognition from academia. [Kevin] Wallsten believes there is a \u201cblind spot when it comes to Drudge. No one understands how he works in the media ecosystem. We as academics are loath to describe the influence of single individuals. We study systems and how individuals fit into a greater whole. This idea of one great man who can spark a revolution is often beyond the scope of academia.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* By April 2017 Charles Hurt had left the Drudge Report to become editor of the Washington Times and Matt had hired Daniel Halper, the former Washington bureau chief of the New York Post.<\/p>\n<p>In the Age of Trump, the news cycle has never been as juiced. The Drudge Report\u2019s page views have continued their upward trajectory. From December 2015 to December 2018 there have been a total of 55,136,650,898 page views of the Drudge Report, with 146,000,000 average monthly visits, according to SimilarWeb. From January 2018 to January 2019, over eleven billion visits were recorded to the Drudge Report, according to Quantcast.<\/p>\n<p>However, a lifetime of being hunched over a computer for as many as seventeen hours a day has taken its toll on Matt\u2019s body. He experiences pain in his back, neck, and shoulder. His spine is curved, and he has one foot \u201cthat is turned out in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t try to live my life,\u201d Matt once told a friend. \u201cIt\u2019s horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Drudge Report watchers say there has been a noticeable slowdown leading into 2019. The page doesn\u2019t update quite as quickly as it once did. Many can\u2019t remember the last time the Drudge Report broke a major story.<\/p>\n<p>Longtime Republican consultant and Reagan biographer Craig Shirley believes social media is taking its toll on Matt\u2019s ability to crash a news cycle, saying, \u201cTwitter now moves a story much faster than Drudge does.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the 2020 book by Matt Lysiak: * For those who had accompanied the Republican nominee to the debate, the sense of anticipation came with the full knowledge that the moments to follow in the debate would forever change the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=134074\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29205],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-matt-drudge-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134074"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154709,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134074\/revisions\/154709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}