February 7, 2024 • 20 mins
The Drudge Report has played an outsized role in political media for decades. Journalists wanted their stories linked on the site--they still do--and they went to great lengths to get it. Host Chris Moody travels to Washington, D.C. to talk to prominent journalists and analysts to get a better understanding of the power and influence of Drudge in shaping the media narrative. If you have a great Matt Drudge story, call the hotline at 301-200-2414 and tell Chris about it!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The year was twenty ten and Tucker Carlson was working
his ass off. He had just launched a news website
called The Daily Caller, and in those early days, not
everything was going to plan. The traffic numbers weren't where
Tucker wanted them, his reporters weren't landing enough scoops to
put his sight on the map, and for a reason
that totally confounded him, Tucker Carlson couldn't, for the life
(00:22):
of him, get Matt Drudge to link to his stories
on the Drudge Report. This last part was a significant problem.
Tucker launched The Daily Caller on a business model that
was reliant on clicks for success, and he saw the
Drudge Report, which drove more traffic than any other news
aggregator in the world, as his ticket to success.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
When we first launched it, our hopes were in squarely
on Drudge. We can get Drudge links. I remember the
first one we got. I tried so many times to
meet with Matt Drudge. He would absolutely would not meet
with me. I called in Coulter. You know, I think
she probably gets three calls a day from people trying
to get a meeting with Drudge. But now not even
a bite.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Tucker was getting a little desperate. The lack of links
from Drudge seemed intentional, as though it was a personal vendetta.
Tucker had known Drudge for a long time. What was
the deal. At one point, Tucker brought together reporters at
The Daily Caller, mostly young twenty somethings fresh out of
college who were hungry to make a name for themselves
in Washington. In a bit of a joke, Tucker told
(01:24):
them that he was going to hold a contest. He
wanted the reporters to brainstorm and pitch a headline that
would most likely be picked up by the Drudge Report.
I know all this because I was one of those reporters,
and no, I didn't win the contest. Look, Tucker was
having a little bit of fun, but it was a
sign of how Drudge was very much in the minds
(01:44):
of reporters and editors at the time. But nothing worked.
Drudge continued to ignore Tucker and The Daily Caller. So
one day Tucker got in his car and drove out
of DC to Virginia to visit someone who might be
able to help. His name was Joe Curl, and he
was an editor of the Drudge report.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I went down with Starbucks in some far suburban part
of northern Virginia and sat down with Joe Curl and
just point blank said, is there, you know, let's establish
some kind of business relationship? You know, is there? I
don't know what the priorers of it would be, but
is there some way that you know, we could get
a formal relationship, non publicized, but you know where you
(02:25):
link to our stuff. He looked at me like it
was an FBI sting operation. I'll never forget it, like
I was trying to entrap him or something, which of
course I wasn't obviously, But he said to me, you know,
I absolutely cannot even have this conversation. Matt wouldn't like it.
Matt doesn't do anything like that. He considers it corrupt.
Except I'm not suggesting anything corrupt, of course, But he said, nope,
(02:49):
Matt would consider that betrayal and corruption. And there's no
chance I will even have this conversation with you, and
I'm not in a position to make that deal anyway.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I was impressed by that.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I mean, I was just pointed. Of course, I would
love to have reliable Drudge links, but he was a purist.
My sense is from talking to Drudge and to his employees.
He made a lot of money on that site, mostly
because he kept his overhead to a minimum, had very
few employees, and probably his only costs were for bandwidth effectively,
but he.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Made a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
But that was clearly not the point. I mean, he
could have made a lot more money than he did
by doing deals with me, for example, but he had
no interest. He was an artist.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Tucker Carlson's story is emblematic for how important the Drudge
Report was to news reporters, especially those on the political right.
Matt Drudge could single handedly make or break a website.
He was a king maker, and people went to extreme
lengths to get his attention. In this episode, I'll be
talking to journalists across the political spectrum about what Drudge
(03:48):
meant for them and the success of their careers. Oh, eventually,
Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller did get that Drudge link and
it immediately crashed the site. Stay tuned. This is finding
Matt Drudge. How could the most powerful man in media
basically just vanish from public life? From JMW Productions and iHeartMedia.
(04:12):
This is finding Matt Drudge to get a sense of
how important Drudge is and was to political reporters. I
traveled to Washington, DC, a city crawling with journalists for years.
(04:32):
Journalists spent a lot of time thinking about how to
get their stories on the Drudge Report. I know I
certainly did. I can't tell you how many times I
sent my own stories to Matt Drudge in hopes of
getting linked. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't. There
was really no science to it, but you could write
your headline in a way that he might like. It
just speaks to his power in shaping the news during
(04:54):
the two thousands. Here's Philip Wegman, White House correspondent for
real clear politics.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Underestimate his reach. And when you're at an outlet where
hard work is measured and clicks, best thing you can
do is get on the banner. And obviously every reporter
in BC has his Matt Drudge at AOL dot com email.
My trick for the longest time, and it worked on
(05:20):
a couple of different occasions. To get stuff on Drudge
was I downloaded AOL and stant messenger again, and this
is probably twenty sixteen through twenty eighteen, and I would
DM through AOL and stint messenger my stories to him.
I'm not sure if there's correlation in causation, but it
(05:44):
works more than half a dozen times. But you would
send a DM through AOL and occasionally you would make
the more page and that's worth what fifty to one
hundred thousand concurrence.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Reporters often swapped very specific secrets for how to get
that Drudge. Drudge developed a reputation as someone who is
extremely particular about how he liked to communicate. Here's Carrie Pickett,
a political reporter for the Washington Times.
Speaker 6 (06:10):
I was first told way way back that when you
send your links to him, you send it the link
and you just don't bother him after that, don't try
and have a conversation with him, don't try and bug
him after that, because then if you bug him too much, then.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
He will just ghost you completely.
Speaker 6 (06:31):
It's almost like doing like a dead drop and then
just leave like the soup Nazi. You know. It's like
there was always this sort of like procedure, and if
you messed up the procedure, your link wouldn't go up.
And if you try to pitch him another story for like,
you know, the next three four or five months, it
would it would not go up, so you had to
(06:52):
be very very careful. It's almost like he was very
very sensitive about how you pitched your stories. If there
were like mistakes in your stories, like I'm talking about
typos or grammatical error, sometimes.
Speaker 7 (07:04):
He wouldn't put it up.
Speaker 6 (07:05):
And you know, he'd make excuses like that you can't
get angry with him because then he'll never put you
up again. So there'd be like things like that, like
don't piss him off because then he'll never link. You
don't do that, you know, So we'd just be like,
just put your story there and then maybe he'll replace it,
but don't bitch about it. Your editors were thinking about clicks.
(07:28):
It's all about the clicks, and if your stories are
getting clicks, then your job is more secure. I recall
I get a lot of places in the past that
I've worked at it's.
Speaker 7 (07:41):
Like, so's oh kind, George's like wow, ding ding ding
ding ding.
Speaker 6 (07:45):
Pyty time, whoo aren't you awesome? You know, So it
was kind of like more of like a recognition someone
would like send out like a little siren thing like
you're so cool awesomeness dude.
Speaker 8 (07:58):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
For some reporters, getting that Drudge link is not just
about clicks, although it's a nice perk. It's also about
street cred, especially when reporters are trying to woo conservative sources.
Matt Laslow is a reporter who has covered Capitol Hill
for decades. For him, getting Drudge links has helped get
Republican lawmakers to talk to him for years.
Speaker 8 (08:20):
I've always liked send him stuff trying to get that
like Drudge boost. A lot of the conservatives that cover
see it and they're like, hey, saw you on Drudge.
That gives me street cred with all these Republicans I
want to interview, you know, if Ah'm in their publication
or like Fox News quotes me whatever, boom, that makes
(08:43):
MTG trust me a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 8 (08:46):
Yes, Matt Gates makes them trust me a little bit more,
I think, or I hope.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Was there a time when you were checking the Drudge
Report a lot?
Speaker 8 (08:58):
Yeah, yesterday.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
Why do you check the Drudge Report to see if
they pick up my stories?
Speaker 8 (09:06):
That's the only time I check it.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Getting on Drudge also meant the TV bookers would see
your story and then feature that story or you on
their national television shows. For lots of reporters, Drudge was
a gateway to cable news fame. Here's Ed Henry, a
former CNN and Fox News correspondent.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
If you could get your story featured at the top
of Drudge, it was it conferred some kind of status
in the media landscape. But it also like every TV
booker in the world at CNN or Fox read Drudge
all day because there was the hottest site in.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
The world, and if you're really lucky, you'll get FaceTime
with Drudge. This almost never happens, especially recently, but it's
so special that people remember it decades later. Ed Henry
shared a single elevator ride with Drudge in the nineteen
nineties and he still remembers it vividly. Now that's power.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
I do remember having like elevator conversations with him, but
like we were both heading up an elevator at the
Hotel Washington or one of those to go to a
rooftop party and you'd get fifteen seconds with him. But honestly,
none of it was revealing, and that it just became
(10:21):
it was like this whale you're chasing, like he's over
there and he's under the water. And then there's a spout.
It really felt like that because there was like a
Howard Hughes quality of where is this guy? And who
is this guy? And he wore the hat and he
there was just a lot of mystery around him, and
we thought it was cool ed.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Henry and Mark Halprin invited Drudge for a drink while
he was in Washington many years ago. It did not
go as planned.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
We were like twenty something, we had nothing better going on,
and we really wanted him to highlight our story. So anyway,
I remember distinct memory that I think Drudge was coming
to Washington for the White House Correspondence dinner and he
agreed to meet Mark and I at the Mayflower Hotel
(11:07):
for a drink, and we wanted to like give him
some more of our scoops and just kind of maybe
we'll be the guys who finally see this guy and
can report back, like what's he really like?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I don't know why.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
We want to maybe do a profile love and we
just want.
Speaker 8 (11:20):
To see him.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
And at the appointed hour we sat there and sat
there and he never showed. So you were looking at
me like I answered the mystery elusive some more literally,
and we were like kind of Oh, he'll be here. Oh,
and we're telling ourselves you know, he'll be here, And
then we started getting like almost embarrassed, like we don't
(11:44):
have any cloud. This guy blew us off. And honestly,
I just think he would make drink dates with fifteen
different people and might go to this one or that
one and marches to his own drummer even now, right,
So I don't think he snubbed. I don't think he
as being I think he just you can't corral a guy, right,
(12:05):
and that's part of who he is.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Do you know where Matt Drudge is? If you have
a great Matt Drudge story, they can shed insight into
the mysterious mogul and help us on our search. Call
us at three zero one two zero zero two four
one four and tell us about it. We may even
air your message in the final episodes of the show.
If you want us to credit you, please say so
and leave your name. It wasn't just reporters seeking out Drudge.
(12:38):
Politicians learned quickly the benefit of having Drudge's ear. At
the height of his powers, Drudge was talking to campaigns
across the country and even presidential administrations who are trying
to shape the content on his site. Mary Madeline was
assistant to the President and counselor to the Vice President
under the George W. Bush administration. As a Bush and
Cheney operative. It was regularly in contact with Matt Drudge,
(13:02):
sending him scoops, info, and gossip directly from the White House.
Among Bush staffers, Madeline, who's married to longtime Clinton ade
James Carville, was extremely successful in shaping the narrative on
the Drudge Report.
Speaker 7 (13:16):
I never said him anything that was bullshit. That's why
I think I had such a good record of getting
stuff posted there. We did email back and forth a lot,
and I again, that's why I find him an iconically
ironic sense of humor, because he just was a dry
wet when.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
You were working let's say, you know, in the White
House or something like that, Like that's a time when
you'd send him stuff to try to change the narrative,
to shape the narrative.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
Yes, absolutely, or if there was some like not just
White House, any kind of big announcement. You couldn't get
him to shape a star. And I never tried, Like
that was not the place to shape a story. And
it's better not to shape a story, but just to
have facts. He was absolutely the best posting board for
(14:06):
getting good facts out there, particularly early on when Cheney
had a health incident, that press would go crazy and
had him killed him, like, you know, had him on
death's door all the time. So then I would like,
I'd get a statement from the doctor and then send
(14:26):
that to him.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Was there people within the White House that it was
like their job to send stuff to people like Drudge?
Or was there a Drudge strategy or was it just like, oh, hey,
I you know, I knew him at a party, and
I'm going to send this to him, Like was there
an overhead strategy or was it just kind of a
thing you'd kind of think to do well.
Speaker 7 (14:42):
I cannot think of a single person that didn't read
him and didn't try to send him stuff. I can't
remember being in campaigns and the White House where people
would come to me and say, you can you call
Rush or can you call Drudge? And I think that
was predicated on the nature of our relationships, which was
(15:06):
predicated on I never really used them except for truth.
I did not spin. I mean, believe it or not.
I mean you can spin, but there's an engine spin
in facts and Drudge and Rush were reserved in my
arsenal for getting facts into the narrative that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Political campaigns also relied on Drudge to move the needle
in the news cycle. Tim Miller is a longtime Republican
campaign operative who worked for John McCain in two thousand
and eight and a super pac that supported Mitt Romney
in twenty twelve. He also worked for Jeb Bush in
twenty sixteen. For years, Miller was in the business of
shoveling out what's called opposition research on opposing candidates, or
(15:55):
as normal people call it, dirt, and Drudge was a
key piece of that strategy.
Speaker 9 (16:01):
Judge Report was massive for a couple of reasons. One
it was the Judge work was the biggest traffic driver,
definitely in conservative media outlets, but I think also among
mainstream media outlets. Reporters wanted to be on the Drudge Report,
so as as somebody who chose job it was to
(16:22):
deal with reporters, feed them information, create build relationships, you know,
getting having their story show up on the Drudge Report
helped with relationship building with those reporters, right, because those
reporters will get patted on the head by their bosses
and their traffic members would look good and and et cetera.
So reporters wanted to be on the Drudge Report. Drudge
Report also helped you drive news cycles because the TV
(16:45):
producers would watch the Drudge Report. So, you know, if
we had a piece of information about a candidate that
you know, we wanted to get more attention, right. We
didn't want it there just to be one new story
about it and then it goes away. You know, you
want to start a conversation about it. You want to
start a chat or build a narrative, as we say.
Judge Report was a key part, right, So you know,
(17:07):
if we were trying to you know, really embarrass someone,
you really draw attention to a negative piece of information
that came out, you know, we'd work hard to try
to get it on Drudge and then hopefully that would spiral,
you know, other outlets and it would sort of create
this snowballing effect. I played a big role in that way.
(17:29):
You knew everybody was looking at it. It was a
good way to make sure a piece of information got
injected into kind of the political conversation of the day.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
So how do campaigns leverage relationships with Drudge. Do they
try to set up a meeting or how do they
build these relationships?
Speaker 9 (17:46):
Everybody wanted to be on Drudge's good side. He is mysterious.
You know, he has an AOL account that you blind email.
We are blindly emailing the Drudge at AOL thing constantly links.
It really is a crapshoot. It was almost like act
of God more than direct lobbying. There was some mystery
(18:07):
to it, and Drudge was like a craps tabe, you know.
I mean you would be hot and cold right like.
There would be times where I would be sending stuff
through and it was always getting up right onto the site.
And so I would then feel more bullish to be
able to, you know, tell reporters that we're going to
get We're going to get the article up onto Drudge.
(18:29):
And then I mean literally I would go. I went
years where I would get nothing. So it's it's been
a long career of kind of ups and downs. But
my understanding this with other people said that it's also
been a bit similar. It's just hard to know exactly
what is what's driving them.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
And when you looked at your whole campaign media strategy,
you've got the networks. You got the New York Times,
you got the locals, you got the bloggers. You know,
before Twitter and now you have Twittered. In the whole ecosystem,
where is Drudge?
Speaker 9 (19:01):
I mean at the top I dredged just depending on again,
placement on the site is important, right, I mean, if
it's a banner headline with that little red siren, or
you know it's one of the top headlines, I mean
that is you know absolutely what was seen as one of,
if not the most important placement because you knew what
(19:22):
it meant downstream. If you can get a prime placement
on Drudge and it's something that he's gonna he's gonna
leave up there for a while, you know that that
is going to drive a social media conversation, broadcast media conversation,
and so you know it's it's absolutely crucial. There wasn't
any other example of where you know, we could get
(19:43):
a story placed on a blog and know that people
are going to see it, Like the only way to
guarantee you was to get that link that was on
a blog on to Drudge.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Republicans like Tim Miller and Mary Madaline had developed strategies
for getting their message to Drudge, someone who but at
the time was considered to lean more conservative. But it
wasn't just Republicans who made efforts to curry his favor.
Democrats also had his ear, including one Democratic operative who
might have been closer to Drudge than any GOP operative.
(20:16):
In our next episode, we'll tell you all about her.
This is Finding Matt Drudge. Remember to call us at
(20:45):
three zero one two zero zero two four one four
if you have a great tip or a great Matt
Drudge story. We'll track down the tips for the final
episodes of the show.
The year was twenty ten and Tucker Carlson was working
his ass off. He had just launched a news website
called The Daily Caller, and in those early days, not
everything was going to plan. The traffic numbers weren't where
Tucker wanted them, his reporters weren't landing enough scoops to
put his sight on the map, and for a reason
that totally confounded him, Tucker Carlson couldn't, for the life
(00:22):
of him, get Matt Drudge to link to his stories
on the Drudge Report. This last part was a significant problem.
Tucker launched The Daily Caller on a business model that
was reliant on clicks for success, and he saw the
Drudge Report, which drove more traffic than any other news
aggregator in the world, as his ticket to success.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
When we first launched it, our hopes were in squarely
on Drudge. We can get Drudge links. I remember the
first one we got. I tried so many times to
meet with Matt Drudge. He would absolutely would not meet
with me. I called in Coulter. You know, I think
she probably gets three calls a day from people trying
to get a meeting with Drudge. But now not even
a bite.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Tucker was getting a little desperate. The lack of links
from Drudge seemed intentional, as though it was a personal vendetta.
Tucker had known Drudge for a long time. What was
the deal. At one point, Tucker brought together reporters at
The Daily Caller, mostly young twenty somethings fresh out of
college who were hungry to make a name for themselves
in Washington. In a bit of a joke, Tucker told
(01:24):
them that he was going to hold a contest. He
wanted the reporters to brainstorm and pitch a headline that
would most likely be picked up by the Drudge Report.
I know all this because I was one of those reporters,
and no, I didn't win the contest. Look, Tucker was
having a little bit of fun, but it was a
sign of how Drudge was very much in the minds
(01:44):
of reporters and editors at the time. But nothing worked.
Drudge continued to ignore Tucker and The Daily Caller. So
one day Tucker got in his car and drove out
of DC to Virginia to visit someone who might be
able to help. His name was Joe Curl, and he
was an editor of the Drudge report.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I went down with Starbucks in some far suburban part
of northern Virginia and sat down with Joe Curl and
just point blank said, is there, you know, let's establish
some kind of business relationship? You know, is there? I
don't know what the priorers of it would be, but
is there some way that you know, we could get
a formal relationship, non publicized, but you know where you
(02:25):
link to our stuff. He looked at me like it
was an FBI sting operation. I'll never forget it, like
I was trying to entrap him or something, which of
course I wasn't obviously, But he said to me, you know,
I absolutely cannot even have this conversation. Matt wouldn't like it.
Matt doesn't do anything like that. He considers it corrupt.
Except I'm not suggesting anything corrupt, of course, But he said, nope,
(02:49):
Matt would consider that betrayal and corruption. And there's no
chance I will even have this conversation with you, and
I'm not in a position to make that deal anyway.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I was impressed by that.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I mean, I was just pointed. Of course, I would
love to have reliable Drudge links, but he was a purist.
My sense is from talking to Drudge and to his employees.
He made a lot of money on that site, mostly
because he kept his overhead to a minimum, had very
few employees, and probably his only costs were for bandwidth effectively,
but he.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Made a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
But that was clearly not the point. I mean, he
could have made a lot more money than he did
by doing deals with me, for example, but he had
no interest. He was an artist.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Tucker Carlson's story is emblematic for how important the Drudge
Report was to news reporters, especially those on the political right.
Matt Drudge could single handedly make or break a website.
He was a king maker, and people went to extreme
lengths to get his attention. In this episode, I'll be
talking to journalists across the political spectrum about what Drudge
(03:48):
meant for them and the success of their careers. Oh, eventually,
Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller did get that Drudge link and
it immediately crashed the site. Stay tuned. This is finding
Matt Drudge. How could the most powerful man in media
basically just vanish from public life? From JMW Productions and iHeartMedia.
(04:12):
This is finding Matt Drudge to get a sense of
how important Drudge is and was to political reporters. I
traveled to Washington, DC, a city crawling with journalists for years.
(04:32):
Journalists spent a lot of time thinking about how to
get their stories on the Drudge Report. I know I
certainly did. I can't tell you how many times I
sent my own stories to Matt Drudge in hopes of
getting linked. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't. There
was really no science to it, but you could write
your headline in a way that he might like. It
just speaks to his power in shaping the news during
(04:54):
the two thousands. Here's Philip Wegman, White House correspondent for
real clear politics.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Underestimate his reach. And when you're at an outlet where
hard work is measured and clicks, best thing you can
do is get on the banner. And obviously every reporter
in BC has his Matt Drudge at AOL dot com email.
My trick for the longest time, and it worked on
(05:20):
a couple of different occasions. To get stuff on Drudge
was I downloaded AOL and stant messenger again, and this
is probably twenty sixteen through twenty eighteen, and I would
DM through AOL and stint messenger my stories to him.
I'm not sure if there's correlation in causation, but it
(05:44):
works more than half a dozen times. But you would
send a DM through AOL and occasionally you would make
the more page and that's worth what fifty to one
hundred thousand concurrence.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Reporters often swapped very specific secrets for how to get
that Drudge. Drudge developed a reputation as someone who is
extremely particular about how he liked to communicate. Here's Carrie Pickett,
a political reporter for the Washington Times.
Speaker 6 (06:10):
I was first told way way back that when you
send your links to him, you send it the link
and you just don't bother him after that, don't try
and have a conversation with him, don't try and bug
him after that, because then if you bug him too much, then.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
He will just ghost you completely.
Speaker 6 (06:31):
It's almost like doing like a dead drop and then
just leave like the soup Nazi. You know. It's like
there was always this sort of like procedure, and if
you messed up the procedure, your link wouldn't go up.
And if you try to pitch him another story for like,
you know, the next three four or five months, it
would it would not go up, so you had to
(06:52):
be very very careful. It's almost like he was very
very sensitive about how you pitched your stories. If there
were like mistakes in your stories, like I'm talking about
typos or grammatical error, sometimes.
Speaker 7 (07:04):
He wouldn't put it up.
Speaker 6 (07:05):
And you know, he'd make excuses like that you can't
get angry with him because then he'll never put you
up again. So there'd be like things like that, like
don't piss him off because then he'll never link. You
don't do that, you know, So we'd just be like,
just put your story there and then maybe he'll replace it,
but don't bitch about it. Your editors were thinking about clicks.
(07:28):
It's all about the clicks, and if your stories are
getting clicks, then your job is more secure. I recall
I get a lot of places in the past that
I've worked at it's.
Speaker 7 (07:41):
Like, so's oh kind, George's like wow, ding ding ding
ding ding.
Speaker 6 (07:45):
Pyty time, whoo aren't you awesome? You know, So it
was kind of like more of like a recognition someone
would like send out like a little siren thing like
you're so cool awesomeness dude.
Speaker 8 (07:58):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
For some reporters, getting that Drudge link is not just
about clicks, although it's a nice perk. It's also about
street cred, especially when reporters are trying to woo conservative sources.
Matt Laslow is a reporter who has covered Capitol Hill
for decades. For him, getting Drudge links has helped get
Republican lawmakers to talk to him for years.
Speaker 8 (08:20):
I've always liked send him stuff trying to get that
like Drudge boost. A lot of the conservatives that cover
see it and they're like, hey, saw you on Drudge.
That gives me street cred with all these Republicans I
want to interview, you know, if Ah'm in their publication
or like Fox News quotes me whatever, boom, that makes
(08:43):
MTG trust me a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 8 (08:46):
Yes, Matt Gates makes them trust me a little bit more,
I think, or I hope.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Was there a time when you were checking the Drudge
Report a lot?
Speaker 8 (08:58):
Yeah, yesterday.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
Why do you check the Drudge Report to see if
they pick up my stories?
Speaker 8 (09:06):
That's the only time I check it.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Getting on Drudge also meant the TV bookers would see
your story and then feature that story or you on
their national television shows. For lots of reporters, Drudge was
a gateway to cable news fame. Here's Ed Henry, a
former CNN and Fox News correspondent.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
If you could get your story featured at the top
of Drudge, it was it conferred some kind of status
in the media landscape. But it also like every TV
booker in the world at CNN or Fox read Drudge
all day because there was the hottest site in.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
The world, and if you're really lucky, you'll get FaceTime
with Drudge. This almost never happens, especially recently, but it's
so special that people remember it decades later. Ed Henry
shared a single elevator ride with Drudge in the nineteen
nineties and he still remembers it vividly. Now that's power.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
I do remember having like elevator conversations with him, but
like we were both heading up an elevator at the
Hotel Washington or one of those to go to a
rooftop party and you'd get fifteen seconds with him. But honestly,
none of it was revealing, and that it just became
(10:21):
it was like this whale you're chasing, like he's over
there and he's under the water. And then there's a spout.
It really felt like that because there was like a
Howard Hughes quality of where is this guy? And who
is this guy? And he wore the hat and he
there was just a lot of mystery around him, and
we thought it was cool ed.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Henry and Mark Halprin invited Drudge for a drink while
he was in Washington many years ago. It did not
go as planned.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
We were like twenty something, we had nothing better going on,
and we really wanted him to highlight our story. So anyway,
I remember distinct memory that I think Drudge was coming
to Washington for the White House Correspondence dinner and he
agreed to meet Mark and I at the Mayflower Hotel
(11:07):
for a drink, and we wanted to like give him
some more of our scoops and just kind of maybe
we'll be the guys who finally see this guy and
can report back, like what's he really like?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I don't know why.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
We want to maybe do a profile love and we
just want.
Speaker 8 (11:20):
To see him.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
And at the appointed hour we sat there and sat
there and he never showed. So you were looking at
me like I answered the mystery elusive some more literally,
and we were like kind of Oh, he'll be here. Oh,
and we're telling ourselves you know, he'll be here, And
then we started getting like almost embarrassed, like we don't
(11:44):
have any cloud. This guy blew us off. And honestly,
I just think he would make drink dates with fifteen
different people and might go to this one or that
one and marches to his own drummer even now, right,
So I don't think he snubbed. I don't think he
as being I think he just you can't corral a guy, right,
(12:05):
and that's part of who he is.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Do you know where Matt Drudge is? If you have
a great Matt Drudge story, they can shed insight into
the mysterious mogul and help us on our search. Call
us at three zero one two zero zero two four
one four and tell us about it. We may even
air your message in the final episodes of the show.
If you want us to credit you, please say so
and leave your name. It wasn't just reporters seeking out Drudge.
(12:38):
Politicians learned quickly the benefit of having Drudge's ear. At
the height of his powers, Drudge was talking to campaigns
across the country and even presidential administrations who are trying
to shape the content on his site. Mary Madeline was
assistant to the President and counselor to the Vice President
under the George W. Bush administration. As a Bush and
Cheney operative. It was regularly in contact with Matt Drudge,
(13:02):
sending him scoops, info, and gossip directly from the White House.
Among Bush staffers, Madeline, who's married to longtime Clinton ade
James Carville, was extremely successful in shaping the narrative on
the Drudge Report.
Speaker 7 (13:16):
I never said him anything that was bullshit. That's why
I think I had such a good record of getting
stuff posted there. We did email back and forth a lot,
and I again, that's why I find him an iconically
ironic sense of humor, because he just was a dry
wet when.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
You were working let's say, you know, in the White
House or something like that, Like that's a time when
you'd send him stuff to try to change the narrative,
to shape the narrative.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
Yes, absolutely, or if there was some like not just
White House, any kind of big announcement. You couldn't get
him to shape a star. And I never tried, Like
that was not the place to shape a story. And
it's better not to shape a story, but just to
have facts. He was absolutely the best posting board for
(14:06):
getting good facts out there, particularly early on when Cheney
had a health incident, that press would go crazy and
had him killed him, like, you know, had him on
death's door all the time. So then I would like,
I'd get a statement from the doctor and then send
(14:26):
that to him.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Was there people within the White House that it was
like their job to send stuff to people like Drudge?
Or was there a Drudge strategy or was it just like, oh, hey,
I you know, I knew him at a party, and
I'm going to send this to him, Like was there
an overhead strategy or was it just kind of a
thing you'd kind of think to do well.
Speaker 7 (14:42):
I cannot think of a single person that didn't read
him and didn't try to send him stuff. I can't
remember being in campaigns and the White House where people
would come to me and say, you can you call
Rush or can you call Drudge? And I think that
was predicated on the nature of our relationships, which was
(15:06):
predicated on I never really used them except for truth.
I did not spin. I mean, believe it or not.
I mean you can spin, but there's an engine spin
in facts and Drudge and Rush were reserved in my
arsenal for getting facts into the narrative that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Political campaigns also relied on Drudge to move the needle
in the news cycle. Tim Miller is a longtime Republican
campaign operative who worked for John McCain in two thousand
and eight and a super pac that supported Mitt Romney
in twenty twelve. He also worked for Jeb Bush in
twenty sixteen. For years, Miller was in the business of
shoveling out what's called opposition research on opposing candidates, or
(15:55):
as normal people call it, dirt, and Drudge was a
key piece of that strategy.
Speaker 9 (16:01):
Judge Report was massive for a couple of reasons. One
it was the Judge work was the biggest traffic driver,
definitely in conservative media outlets, but I think also among
mainstream media outlets. Reporters wanted to be on the Drudge Report,
so as as somebody who chose job it was to
(16:22):
deal with reporters, feed them information, create build relationships, you know,
getting having their story show up on the Drudge Report
helped with relationship building with those reporters, right, because those
reporters will get patted on the head by their bosses
and their traffic members would look good and and et cetera.
So reporters wanted to be on the Drudge Report. Drudge
Report also helped you drive news cycles because the TV
(16:45):
producers would watch the Drudge Report. So, you know, if
we had a piece of information about a candidate that
you know, we wanted to get more attention, right. We
didn't want it there just to be one new story
about it and then it goes away. You know, you
want to start a conversation about it. You want to
start a chat or build a narrative, as we say.
Judge Report was a key part, right, So you know,
(17:07):
if we were trying to you know, really embarrass someone,
you really draw attention to a negative piece of information
that came out, you know, we'd work hard to try
to get it on Drudge and then hopefully that would spiral,
you know, other outlets and it would sort of create
this snowballing effect. I played a big role in that way.
(17:29):
You knew everybody was looking at it. It was a
good way to make sure a piece of information got
injected into kind of the political conversation of the day.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
So how do campaigns leverage relationships with Drudge. Do they
try to set up a meeting or how do they
build these relationships?
Speaker 9 (17:46):
Everybody wanted to be on Drudge's good side. He is mysterious.
You know, he has an AOL account that you blind email.
We are blindly emailing the Drudge at AOL thing constantly links.
It really is a crapshoot. It was almost like act
of God more than direct lobbying. There was some mystery
(18:07):
to it, and Drudge was like a craps tabe, you know.
I mean you would be hot and cold right like.
There would be times where I would be sending stuff
through and it was always getting up right onto the site.
And so I would then feel more bullish to be
able to, you know, tell reporters that we're going to
get We're going to get the article up onto Drudge.
(18:29):
And then I mean literally I would go. I went
years where I would get nothing. So it's it's been
a long career of kind of ups and downs. But
my understanding this with other people said that it's also
been a bit similar. It's just hard to know exactly
what is what's driving them.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
And when you looked at your whole campaign media strategy,
you've got the networks. You got the New York Times,
you got the locals, you got the bloggers. You know,
before Twitter and now you have Twittered. In the whole ecosystem,
where is Drudge?
Speaker 9 (19:01):
I mean at the top I dredged just depending on again,
placement on the site is important, right, I mean, if
it's a banner headline with that little red siren, or
you know it's one of the top headlines, I mean
that is you know absolutely what was seen as one of,
if not the most important placement because you knew what
(19:22):
it meant downstream. If you can get a prime placement
on Drudge and it's something that he's gonna he's gonna
leave up there for a while, you know that that
is going to drive a social media conversation, broadcast media conversation,
and so you know it's it's absolutely crucial. There wasn't
any other example of where you know, we could get
(19:43):
a story placed on a blog and know that people
are going to see it, Like the only way to
guarantee you was to get that link that was on
a blog on to Drudge.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Republicans like Tim Miller and Mary Madaline had developed strategies
for getting their message to Drudge, someone who but at
the time was considered to lean more conservative. But it
wasn't just Republicans who made efforts to curry his favor.
Democrats also had his ear, including one Democratic operative who
might have been closer to Drudge than any GOP operative.
(20:16):
In our next episode, we'll tell you all about her.
This is Finding Matt Drudge. Remember to call us at
(20:45):
three zero one two zero zero two four one four
if you have a great tip or a great Matt
Drudge story. We'll track down the tips for the final
episodes of the show.
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