White House Rhetoric: Drudgeing the Depths of Dialogue

Matt Drudge has been an influential media figure for at least 15 years. But most Millennials are probably unaware of how the Drudge Report gained national prominence.

In the wake of the Paula Jones scandal of the Clinton administration, new revelations surfaced regarding more sexual exploits of the 42^nd president. After Newsweek withheld the meticulously documented affair from publication, Drudge blasted it in a banner headline, introducing Monica Lewisnky to the world. This was one of the earliest revelations of just how powerful the “new media” could be. Drudge was rocketed to notoriety after this affair (pun intended).

Fast forward 16 years. On March 21^st, Matt Drudge tweeted the following: “Just paid the Obamacare penalty for not ‘getting covered’… I’M CALLING IT A LIBERTY TAX!”

This not unusual voicing of conservative opposition to Obamacare ignited scorn and derision from the media and even the Whitehouse who shot back “Flat lie, no fee for previous year,” adding, “Scary how much influence he once had.”

This decorous display of White House vitriol proved inaccurate. Since Drudge files taxes as a small business, he paid out quarterly profits rather than just yearly to avoid penalty. Yet, that isn’t even the ridiculous part of this story.

The second line of the Whitehouse comment which snarkily implied that Drudge was past his prime and devoid of significant influence should be added to the dictionary under the term “irony”.

As commentators on Fox’s “The Five” pointed out last week, the drudgereport.com gets over 800 million unique visitors each month. Let’s think about this. What website could we compare to Drudge’s to measure “influence”? How about Healthcare.gov?

This highly publicized site netted about 4 million unique views during the same period. Now, math was never my strong suit, but it looks one of these numbers is not like the other.

To be fair, Drudge’s 175 times larger viewing audience doesn’t negate the power of the presidency, but just as word of advice to the White House, you really don’t want to make jabs about lack of influence right now.