February 28, 2024 • 26 mins
Host Chris Moody travels to Florida to get to the bottom of why Matt Drudge turned against Donald Trump in the run up to the 2020 election after supporting him in 2016. Moody talks to former White House officials to understand what happened and tracks down the last journalist to speak with Drudge on the record. Listeners will also get an inside description of Drudge's Florida compound, which is currently for sale. If you have a great Matt Drudge story, remember to call the hotline at 301-200-2414 and tell Chris about it! Why Drudge Turned on Trump
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
My search for Matt Drudge has brought me here to Miami, Florida,
where Drudge decamped many years ago to soak up the
state's warmth, sunshine, and low taxes after he made it
big in online media. For years, Drudge lived here in
Miami Beach. He was a man about town, driving his
convertible with the top down around Miami hotspots. He loved
(00:27):
the city's nightclubs. He loved dancing, He loved music. But
as Matt Drudge grew more famous, the spotlight on his
personal life also grew more intense. After a few magazine
profiles and national publications drew attention to his private life,
including insinuations about his sexual orientation, he seems to have
decided that he'd had enough of the exposure. He bought
(00:50):
a large home near the Florida Everglades that would offer
the mogul more privacy in his life. Surrounded by imposing
walls and a gate, Drudge could come and go as
he pleased, beyond the watchful gaze of a bustling city,
and from all appearances, he got the peace and quiet
he craved, both at his new compound and in the
other locales he lived from time to time. That is,
(01:14):
until a reporter for the Columbia Journalism Review showed up
at his Florida compound one day in twenty twenty, got
through the gate and knocked on the door. In the
last episode, I mentioned that Drudge's last broadcast interview was
in twenty seventeen. Well that's true, It wasn't absolutely his
last interview. His real final interview was actually a lot
(01:37):
more recent than that. On today's episode of Finding Matt Drudge,
I'll speak to the reporter who drove to Drudge's house
that day. Why did he do it? He wanted an
answer to one major question, a question that has baffled
politicos across the country. A question that, in part we
launched this podcast to answer. Why did Matt Drudge turn
(02:00):
against Donald Trump. I'm Chris Moody. Let's dive in. How
could the most powerful man in media basically just vanish
from public life? From JMW Productions and iHeartMedia. This is
Finding Matt Drudge. In twenty sixteen, Matt Drudge seemed to
(02:28):
have some very high hopes for the presidency of Donald Trump.
His website ran stories promoting Trump as a candidate as
far back as the Republican primary, to the point that
it drove Trump's Republican primary opponents, particularly ted Cruz insane
with jealousy. But it wasn't long before Drudge made a
one point eighty on President Trump. In the run up
(02:48):
to the twenty twenty presidential election, Drudge started posting stories
and headlines that made Trump seem like a fool, which
observers noted boosted Biden in the contentious election season. After
the dust settled in the twenty twenty election and Biden
reigned victorious, people wanted to know why Drudge had turned
against the man he had once supported so strongly. That's
(03:09):
why Bob Norman, a veteran South Florida journalist, found himself
driving his car deep into western Miami Dade County one
afternoon in hopes of visiting Matt Drudge at his house
in person. He wanted to know what everyone else was wondering,
why Drudge had ignored Norman's telephone calls and emails requesting
(03:31):
an interview. As a good reporter, he would pay the
reclusive editor a personal, in person visit, But first he
had to find his house, which was built and designed
not to be found.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
When I looked it up on Google Maps. It was
funny because it just looked like a jungle it was.
There was no house there, it was just overgrowth, and
I thought, wow, this is good. I knew then it
was gonna be interesting whatever. It was going to be
interesting getting, you know, finding the house.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
It's all walled off.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
It's way out in the farmland and woods of southwest
Miami Dade County. It's a little two lane road. To
the west is farmland. West of that is the Everglades,
the swamp on the west side. It's wide open and
(04:28):
you turn around and it's a wall of woods and
that's where he lives. There are nice houses for people
who want to live in solitude, away from the masses,
away from so essentially everything.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Norman didn't have very high hopes about getting to the house,
but he had to do his due diligence. It's a
reporter's duty to do everything within reason to give a
subject an opportunity to comment on a piece of reporting.
Norman figured he'd be blocked by a gate, would leave
a note and head back home, But when he pulled
up to Drudge's property, he was shocked at what he saw.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Drive up to the place wall and me old the
gate's open. I couldn't believe it. Reporters instinct took hold
drove right through the gate. I pulled up where the
house was. It's just sort of this really understated, one
story ranch house you might call it, but it almost
(05:25):
feels like it's dug into the earth. It was a
very nice place, and I believe I stopped outside and
sort of thought about what I was going to do,
game plan. And I didn't stop very long because I
knew what though I knew the law was, you know,
I needed to be quick about this. I couldn't linger.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Norman sat in his car and built up the courage
to walk up to the house, when, to his surprise.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Somebody came up. I was sitting out there and then
I got a knock on the door, and it was
his immigrant Mexican immigrant groundskeeper, who asked me what I
was doing there, and I said, I'm gonna go ahead
and knock on the door, and that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
The groundskeeper didn't tell him to leave or stop him.
Norman got out of his car, walked to Drudge's front
door and gave it a knock.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
His door was like something from a English castle or
something had a huge wooden, ornately carved door, and so
it was like knocking on It was like knocking on
a tree, and so I was like, can you hear
me as you watch? I didn't know what was going on,
but I waited and then I left. I was glad
(06:38):
that I got to at least pierce the veil. I
called him right as I was leaving and said, I
just you know, I just tried to say hello, give
me a call if you can.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
When he got home, Norman's phone rang and on the
other line was Matt Drudge, and he was irate.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
He said, I know who you are, I know your work,
and I'm really surprised that you did this. I'm really
disappointed in you that you would do something like this.
He told me that he had gone to the police.
That was one of the things that he said that
he was going to have me. You know, he had
it on the video me on his property that I
(07:19):
had gone past a no trespassing sign and he was
going to take it to the police and he was
going to you know, I was going to get charged.
And I wasn't worried because I knew the law. But
I also knew that if someone like Matt Drudge took
this to the police and the police took it seriously,
the police don't always do the right thing. It would
(07:40):
have been a little bit embarrassing, I guess, to be arrested,
which could have actually happened again, a false arrest, but
it happens. It was almost like I felt like I
was dealing with someone who wasn't entirely rational. I'm not
saying that he wasn't rational, but it was just it
went on for so long. He said, you are essentially
(08:04):
brave to even do it. That are stupid because you
could have been killed. It's a valid point to make
you go out in the woods and you knock on
somebody's door. You don't know what's going to happen. He
truly felt that I had violated his privacy, that I
had done something terribly wrong to him, and I disagreed
(08:26):
with him, and I told him why that wasn't the case,
and I certainly meant no malice, and that it was
simply knocking on his door and leaving and that's it.
And you know, I wanted to give him every opportunity
to respond to the article. I thought that I might
get response using this method, which is pretty common in
(08:48):
journalistic circles, and he didn't see it that way. He
saw it as a really terrible, horrible thing that I
had done. He never went to the place that was
a bluff. That was just him trying to scare it. Ultimately,
I think he wanted to scare me off this story.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Norman tried to steer the conversation back to the topic
of his story, why did Drudge turn on Trump? But
Drudge wasn't having it. He kept returning to the complaint
about Norman visiting his house.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I've never had someone who just kept coming back to
the problem, coming back to for that long. Just the
endurance that he had on that point was incredible. It
was almost like he was playing it for effect, and
he would go, but you know, you really shouldn't have
done that, you know, it's really bad. I was like,
(09:38):
oh God, are we just gonna not We're not going
to talk about anything, And we really didn't. He won,
He won the phone call because I really didn't get
a lot out of him. He would pause for several
moments as if he were it was going to answer,
and then.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
He would come back.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
But you know, you're I really shouldn't have come on
my It was like, oh my god, just stop. I
think I said that at one point that's ridiculous, you know,
to where it was just please, let's move on. But uh,
we never did get to the place that I wanted
(10:20):
to go.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Drudge didn't stop there.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
The next morning, I find out that he's called an
editor at CGR and just gone off and screamed and said,
this guy violated my privacy, and you know, made a
lot of threats. Cjr. Stood obviously stood behind me and
(10:47):
the work we were doing. Hutdred percent.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Now you might be wondering why I didn't go to
Drudge's house for this podcast. Well I did look into it,
and guess what, By the time I got here in Miami,
Drudge was gone. I mean that house Norman visited was
on sale for a cool two point five million dollars.
Where did Drudge go? I tried asking his friend An Colter,
(11:13):
but she declined to comment. But Colter did talk to
Vanity Fair magazine and here's what she said. Quote, Drudge
and I are both leaving Florida, and we're not telling
anyone where we're going this time. So I guess. The
mystery remains. Do you know where Matt Drudge is? If
(11:38):
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. Norman's story raised the question about
(12:03):
Donald Trump, but didn't really answer it. How could he
really The only person who could articulate what happened is
Matt Drudge himself, and Drudge didn't reveal much. It's been
nearly four years since Norman tried to answer this question,
so I'm going to try to give it another shot.
It was the summer of twenty twenty, and it seemed
(12:24):
like Drudge had already had enough of Trump. The president
hadn't fulfilled all his promises, particularly the one about there
being a border wall across Mexico. Drudge ran a banner
headline on his site slamming Trump for failing to build
the wall. As the year went on, Drudge ran headlines
critical of Trump. By the time Trump was impeached. Drudge
(12:46):
had clearly moved on, also ensub saying, as a reporter
who chronicled the Trump administration closely, his book Sinking in
the Swamp, How Trump's Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington told
the sordid tale Trump's relationship with Drudge, he'd be a
great person to start with. Here's soup saying.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
A strange thing starts happening in twenty nineteen, especially during
the as that first impeachment inquiry and the proceedings start
heating up over the Trump Ukraine scandal, the Drudge Report
starts getting more and more openly hostile, not even hiding it,
not even implicitly so, just more and more explicitly portraying
(13:29):
Donald Trump no longer as a besieged hero to the
conservative movement. The image you would have painted in your
mind of Donald John Trump, leader of the free world
at that time, if you were regularly reading the Drudge Report,
was this is an oafish buffoon who is in over
his head, could very well be a corrupt dipshit. And
(13:53):
here's all this reporting that illustrates just how bad things
are getting for President Trump. And this was not done
through the veil of sympathy. You could sense that something
was changing, at least as it had to do with
Matt Drudge, specifically to the point where individuals on other
(14:15):
big conservative media Trump allies start realizing it. And this
was also something that then President Trump started noticing in
late twenty nineteen and reacting to it within the halls
of the White House with a sense of intense displeasure.
He started asking friends, senior White House officials, other allies
(14:35):
who'd be speaking to things like, Hey, what's going on
with Drudge lately? What's the matter with Drudge? While why
does it seem like he hates Trump? All of a sudden,
I thought we were good. Got to the point where
he even asked Jared Kushner to check in, to start
basically investigating and calling around or perhaps even reaching out
(14:56):
to Matt Drudge to figure out why he's giving his
dad in law such a hard time.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Why do you think that Drudge turned on Trump?
Speaker 3 (15:06):
I'm going to quote a former White House official quote.
Trump understands Matt Trudge's influence. He knows he can be
a little mercurial though, and prone to stir the pot.
He also knows Drudge isn't able to be bullied. Matt
doesn't owe his career to anyone and can't be moved
the way others can because he's not afraid, not just
(15:28):
of Trump but in general. So I think that kind
of gives kind of a taste of a thirty thousand
foot view of what was going on there. Brudge kind
of had a sense for the way the winds were
blowing on. This got to a point where in twenty
nineteen and twenty twenty where Matt Drudge learly felt and
thought that, Okay, I don't need to carry all the
(15:52):
water for this guy anymore. One of the things that
really does account for that turn is that he decided
to take this guy, Donald Trump, who he had politically
buddied up to and sort of portrayed himself as a
staunch media ally, and start turning him into what he
(16:12):
craved the most out of the American political landscape, which
was tabloid fodder to run through his influential Internet machine.
That's what he did with Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal.
And if that's the way you're approaching the most powerful
person or people on the face of the planet, and
if you're someone like Matt Drudge, how could you not
(16:33):
want to give Donald Trump that kind of treatment? It
would be a waste of your at least ostensibly stated
mission in life.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
To get an insider perspective, I wanted to talk directly
with former White House officials about this question, so I
tracked down members of Donald Trump's administration and presidential campaign
to try to piece together what they thought the reason
was that Drudge turned on their boss, and I got
a wide range of answers. The first person I spoke
(17:04):
to was Hogan Gidley, who served as Donald Trump's White
House Deputy Press Secretary and worked in the administration from
twenty seventeen to twenty twenty.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
I heard it was all around the border that the
border wall wasn't built fast enough and that's what made
him mad. I don't know if that's true. I just
heard that from some people, you know, high up close
to the president that I worked with every day, and
I heard him in passing we were talking about it.
I said, how do we lose Drudge?
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Or we had him?
Speaker 4 (17:32):
And like, oh no, they were, you know, the judge
was good to us, and then I think he was
mad because we didn't build the wall fast. Enough or something.
That's what I heard.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
And here's Steve Bannon, who worked on Donald Trump's first
presidential campaign and then joined the administration.
Speaker 6 (17:48):
He was definitely off the Trump train as far as
policy goes, right, He just wasn't in the supporter You
could tell that pretty obviously. The site went so negative Trump,
but also so negative conservative and so negative Mega. It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Sam Nunberg, a Trump campaign advisor in twenty fifteen, thinks
the reason could have to do with Trump's personality. The
more time Drudge spent with Trump, Nunberg says, the less
he liked him.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
I think that Drudge played a pivotal role for Donald
in twenty sixteen, and I think it made a pivotal
role hurting him in twenty twenty, turning against him. One
of the biggest questions is going to be what made
him turn against Donald. They're multiple theories. One thing I
would think is the more time Matt spent with Donald,
the less he liked them. You're not going to like
what you see behind the scenes. It's not a nice picture.
(18:39):
After the midterms as well, maybe Drudge saw the writing
on the wall as well, right, he didn't want to
be with the loser himself. Well, look, we'll never really
know the reasons, right, We'll never know. You'll never get
a straight answer. Ultimately, Donald became a victim of MATC
the same way many others have did. Matt MacDonald lose
(19:02):
the elect tune in twenty twenty now, but Trump sure
as hell could. He used his help and he didn't
have it.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Sean Spicer, Trump's former White House Press secretary, said, there
was surprise when Drudge started being critical of Trump, but
then the relationship appeared irreparable.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
There were a couple early shots that sort of surprised people,
and then it was almost like the doors of the
dam opened up and it wasn't going to ever get
closed again.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Sebastian Gorka was deputy Assistant to the President and strategists
in the Trump White House. I asked him the same question.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
Why did he turn on Trump and what happened there?
Speaker 7 (19:38):
Well, there's a complic theories. The only one that you
know is more feasible is that he sold it to
somebody who wanted to attack my former boss, President Trump.
Either that or he just had a wicked case of
you know, Trump derangement syndrome. I don't know and the
guy is such a recluse, I don't know if we'll
ever find out.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Okay, this is something we definitely need to clear up
because a lot of people think Drudge doesn't even run
the Drudge Report anymore. Let's try to get to the
bottom of this as best we can. Drudge's reversal on
Trump has had people like Gorka speculating about whether Drudge
is still involved. Did he sell the site and run
with the money? Did he license his name? Personally, I'm skeptical.
(20:21):
In a previous episode, we heard from sources who had
direct contact with Matt Drudge. They said that, based on
their private conversations with him, he would never let the
site go on in the hands of someone else. Larry O'Connor,
the former editor of Breitbart dot com, said that the
day Drudge steps away or dies, the site will be gone.
That's from Judge's own lips. Hillary Clinton advisor Tracy Seppel,
(20:44):
who had a long running professional relationship with Drudge, predicted
that one day the Drudge Report would simply go dark
and disappear from the Internet. I'm of the mind to
agree with them. What's more, the website still seems to
harbor the same idiosyncratic obsession Drudge always posted about and
would unlikely translate to a new owner. It's unlikely we
(21:05):
get the same Lana del Rey coverage if Drudge wasn't
still the operator. And from private conversations we've had with
people who refuse to participate in this show, it seems
all but certain he still is the maestro of the
Drudge Report. Still, I wanted to dig further, so I
spoke to Matt Drudge biographer Matt lee Shak, author of
(21:25):
The Drudge Revolution. His book went deep into whether Drudge
has sold the site, and Lee Shak says absolutely not.
Speaker 8 (21:36):
One of the reasons people think that Matt sold the
Drudge Report is because it had moved seemingly to the left.
But they don't understand that Matt was never motivated by politics.
He has his political beliefs, but Matt's real motivation has
always been page plicks. And I don't say that disparagingly.
I mean, he is a businessman and it's like we're
(21:57):
all trying to make a living. But his treatment towards
Trump towards the end really was what raised eyebrows and
made people think that he had sold the website. But
I mean, I can tell you as a fact he
has not sold the website. Matt is definitely running the website.
I mean, I can confirm that to you. He was
offered an obseeing some of money by an NBA owner
(22:20):
who I can't name, to sell the website, and he
turned it down. And his reasoning to one of his
friends was that like he would never let somebody run
the website with his name on it, He would never
do that.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Regardless of the true reason that Trump lost drudges support,
the fact remains the fisser costs drudge support on the
right Leishek says there was a significant drop in traffic
from the time Drudge stopped supporting Trump.
Speaker 8 (22:48):
Since he turned on Trump, his page hit went down
between thirty and forty percent from the peak.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
And here's what Steve Bannon says.
Speaker 6 (23:00):
The right hates it, I mean literally hates it.
Speaker 9 (23:02):
But I think the days of Drudge having any impact
or effect over I just don't see it.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Do you think that Drudge turning on Trump and possibly
you know, by proxy, conservatives hurt his business.
Speaker 6 (23:16):
I'm not so sure the site is anywhere near as
big as it was. It's definitely not as influential.
Speaker 9 (23:21):
That there's just no doubt because I'm not so sure
the left has embraced it. I never hear it talked
about on the left of all the guys, and though
nobody ever says you see a Drudge like and I
never hear from awhere on the right.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Among Trump's former staffers, the anger at Drudge's betrayal is palpable.
Here's Sam Nunberg, the campaign staffer from twenty fifteen.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
I still think we deserve an explanation for what he
did for twenty twenty. But that's one thing that I
think we deserve. And if we don't like his explanation,
we don't like it. But I think we deserve the
right to have at least for closure. I think, no
matter what, we're better off with Donald in office than
what we have now and today. The extent that there's
a responsibility that Matt bourns for that, you know, I say,
(24:05):
fucked you, Matt.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
My biggest takeaway from speaking to all these people is
that conservatives made a faulty assumption about Drudge from the
very beginning. Yes, he made a name for himself by
reporting about Bill and Hillary Clinton. Yes he was critical
of President Obama. Yes, he celebrated Trump's rise, but that
didn't make Drudge a party loyalist. He didn't owe anyone
(24:32):
his allegiance, his support, or his favor on his website,
Drudge is an independent person. He is, as he put
it way back in the nineteen nineties, a partisan for news.
He relishes that independence, and anytime someone started to take
his support or friendship for granted, he was more than
happy to revoke it. And I would argue that it
(24:54):
is that unpredictable spirit that made him so successful in
the first place. You don't have to like him, I
have to agree with him, but always know that he'll
say what he thinks consequences be damned. Look, we've been
circling around Matt Drudge for a long time in this podcast,
talking with people who knew him or met him over
the years. But it's time to get even closer. It's
(25:16):
time to bring in a very special guest. In our
next episode, we will speak with someone on the inside,
an actual former editor of The Drudge Report. He's a
reporter who worked closely with Drudge for years, directly on
the site. Someone who knows more about the Drudge Report
than just about anyone, perhaps other than Matt Drudge himself,
(25:37):
someone who can provide new answers to some of the
questions we've been searching for on this show and new
insights into how the Drudge machine actually works. And let
me tell you, this person has a lot to say.
I'm Chris Moody. Be sure to join us next time
for this special episode of Finding Matt Drudge. Remember to
(26:20):
call us at 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.
My search for Matt Drudge has brought me here to Miami, Florida,
where Drudge decamped many years ago to soak up the
state's warmth, sunshine, and low taxes after he made it
big in online media. For years, Drudge lived here in
Miami Beach. He was a man about town, driving his
convertible with the top down around Miami hotspots. He loved
(00:27):
the city's nightclubs. He loved dancing, He loved music. But
as Matt Drudge grew more famous, the spotlight on his
personal life also grew more intense. After a few magazine
profiles and national publications drew attention to his private life,
including insinuations about his sexual orientation, he seems to have
decided that he'd had enough of the exposure. He bought
(00:50):
a large home near the Florida Everglades that would offer
the mogul more privacy in his life. Surrounded by imposing
walls and a gate, Drudge could come and go as
he pleased, beyond the watchful gaze of a bustling city,
and from all appearances, he got the peace and quiet
he craved, both at his new compound and in the
other locales he lived from time to time. That is,
(01:14):
until a reporter for the Columbia Journalism Review showed up
at his Florida compound one day in twenty twenty, got
through the gate and knocked on the door. In the
last episode, I mentioned that Drudge's last broadcast interview was
in twenty seventeen. Well that's true, It wasn't absolutely his
last interview. His real final interview was actually a lot
(01:37):
more recent than that. On today's episode of Finding Matt Drudge,
I'll speak to the reporter who drove to Drudge's house
that day. Why did he do it? He wanted an
answer to one major question, a question that has baffled
politicos across the country. A question that, in part we
launched this podcast to answer. Why did Matt Drudge turn
(02:00):
against Donald Trump. I'm Chris Moody. Let's dive in. How
could the most powerful man in media basically just vanish
from public life? From JMW Productions and iHeartMedia. This is
Finding Matt Drudge. In twenty sixteen, Matt Drudge seemed to
(02:28):
have some very high hopes for the presidency of Donald Trump.
His website ran stories promoting Trump as a candidate as
far back as the Republican primary, to the point that
it drove Trump's Republican primary opponents, particularly ted Cruz insane
with jealousy. But it wasn't long before Drudge made a
one point eighty on President Trump. In the run up
(02:48):
to the twenty twenty presidential election, Drudge started posting stories
and headlines that made Trump seem like a fool, which
observers noted boosted Biden in the contentious election season. After
the dust settled in the twenty twenty election and Biden
reigned victorious, people wanted to know why Drudge had turned
against the man he had once supported so strongly. That's
(03:09):
why Bob Norman, a veteran South Florida journalist, found himself
driving his car deep into western Miami Dade County one
afternoon in hopes of visiting Matt Drudge at his house
in person. He wanted to know what everyone else was wondering,
why Drudge had ignored Norman's telephone calls and emails requesting
(03:31):
an interview. As a good reporter, he would pay the
reclusive editor a personal, in person visit, But first he
had to find his house, which was built and designed
not to be found.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
When I looked it up on Google Maps. It was
funny because it just looked like a jungle it was.
There was no house there, it was just overgrowth, and
I thought, wow, this is good. I knew then it
was gonna be interesting whatever. It was going to be
interesting getting, you know, finding the house.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
It's all walled off.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
It's way out in the farmland and woods of southwest
Miami Dade County. It's a little two lane road. To
the west is farmland. West of that is the Everglades,
the swamp on the west side. It's wide open and
(04:28):
you turn around and it's a wall of woods and
that's where he lives. There are nice houses for people
who want to live in solitude, away from the masses,
away from so essentially everything.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Norman didn't have very high hopes about getting to the house,
but he had to do his due diligence. It's a
reporter's duty to do everything within reason to give a
subject an opportunity to comment on a piece of reporting.
Norman figured he'd be blocked by a gate, would leave
a note and head back home, But when he pulled
up to Drudge's property, he was shocked at what he saw.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Drive up to the place wall and me old the
gate's open. I couldn't believe it. Reporters instinct took hold
drove right through the gate. I pulled up where the
house was. It's just sort of this really understated, one
story ranch house you might call it, but it almost
(05:25):
feels like it's dug into the earth. It was a
very nice place, and I believe I stopped outside and
sort of thought about what I was going to do,
game plan. And I didn't stop very long because I
knew what though I knew the law was, you know,
I needed to be quick about this. I couldn't linger.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Norman sat in his car and built up the courage
to walk up to the house, when, to his surprise.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Somebody came up. I was sitting out there and then
I got a knock on the door, and it was
his immigrant Mexican immigrant groundskeeper, who asked me what I
was doing there, and I said, I'm gonna go ahead
and knock on the door, and that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
The groundskeeper didn't tell him to leave or stop him.
Norman got out of his car, walked to Drudge's front
door and gave it a knock.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
His door was like something from a English castle or
something had a huge wooden, ornately carved door, and so
it was like knocking on It was like knocking on
a tree, and so I was like, can you hear
me as you watch? I didn't know what was going on,
but I waited and then I left. I was glad
(06:38):
that I got to at least pierce the veil. I
called him right as I was leaving and said, I
just you know, I just tried to say hello, give
me a call if you can.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
When he got home, Norman's phone rang and on the
other line was Matt Drudge, and he was irate.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
He said, I know who you are, I know your work,
and I'm really surprised that you did this. I'm really
disappointed in you that you would do something like this.
He told me that he had gone to the police.
That was one of the things that he said that
he was going to have me. You know, he had
it on the video me on his property that I
(07:19):
had gone past a no trespassing sign and he was
going to take it to the police and he was
going to you know, I was going to get charged.
And I wasn't worried because I knew the law. But
I also knew that if someone like Matt Drudge took
this to the police and the police took it seriously,
the police don't always do the right thing. It would
(07:40):
have been a little bit embarrassing, I guess, to be arrested,
which could have actually happened again, a false arrest, but
it happens. It was almost like I felt like I
was dealing with someone who wasn't entirely rational. I'm not
saying that he wasn't rational, but it was just it
went on for so long. He said, you are essentially
(08:04):
brave to even do it. That are stupid because you
could have been killed. It's a valid point to make
you go out in the woods and you knock on
somebody's door. You don't know what's going to happen. He
truly felt that I had violated his privacy, that I
had done something terribly wrong to him, and I disagreed
(08:26):
with him, and I told him why that wasn't the case,
and I certainly meant no malice, and that it was
simply knocking on his door and leaving and that's it.
And you know, I wanted to give him every opportunity
to respond to the article. I thought that I might
get response using this method, which is pretty common in
(08:48):
journalistic circles, and he didn't see it that way. He
saw it as a really terrible, horrible thing that I
had done. He never went to the place that was
a bluff. That was just him trying to scare it. Ultimately,
I think he wanted to scare me off this story.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Norman tried to steer the conversation back to the topic
of his story, why did Drudge turn on Trump? But
Drudge wasn't having it. He kept returning to the complaint
about Norman visiting his house.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I've never had someone who just kept coming back to
the problem, coming back to for that long. Just the
endurance that he had on that point was incredible. It
was almost like he was playing it for effect, and
he would go, but you know, you really shouldn't have
done that, you know, it's really bad. I was like,
(09:38):
oh God, are we just gonna not We're not going
to talk about anything, And we really didn't. He won,
He won the phone call because I really didn't get
a lot out of him. He would pause for several
moments as if he were it was going to answer,
and then.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
He would come back.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
But you know, you're I really shouldn't have come on
my It was like, oh my god, just stop. I
think I said that at one point that's ridiculous, you know,
to where it was just please, let's move on. But uh,
we never did get to the place that I wanted
(10:20):
to go.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Drudge didn't stop there.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
The next morning, I find out that he's called an
editor at CGR and just gone off and screamed and said,
this guy violated my privacy, and you know, made a
lot of threats. Cjr. Stood obviously stood behind me and
(10:47):
the work we were doing. Hutdred percent.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Now you might be wondering why I didn't go to
Drudge's house for this podcast. Well I did look into it,
and guess what, By the time I got here in Miami,
Drudge was gone. I mean that house Norman visited was
on sale for a cool two point five million dollars.
Where did Drudge go? I tried asking his friend An Colter,
(11:13):
but she declined to comment. But Colter did talk to
Vanity Fair magazine and here's what she said. Quote, Drudge
and I are both leaving Florida, and we're not telling
anyone where we're going this time. So I guess. The
mystery remains. Do you know where Matt Drudge is? If
(11:38):
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. Norman's story raised the question about
(12:03):
Donald Trump, but didn't really answer it. How could he
really The only person who could articulate what happened is
Matt Drudge himself, and Drudge didn't reveal much. It's been
nearly four years since Norman tried to answer this question,
so I'm going to try to give it another shot.
It was the summer of twenty twenty, and it seemed
(12:24):
like Drudge had already had enough of Trump. The president
hadn't fulfilled all his promises, particularly the one about there
being a border wall across Mexico. Drudge ran a banner
headline on his site slamming Trump for failing to build
the wall. As the year went on, Drudge ran headlines
critical of Trump. By the time Trump was impeached. Drudge
(12:46):
had clearly moved on, also ensub saying, as a reporter
who chronicled the Trump administration closely, his book Sinking in
the Swamp, How Trump's Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington told
the sordid tale Trump's relationship with Drudge, he'd be a
great person to start with. Here's soup saying.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
A strange thing starts happening in twenty nineteen, especially during
the as that first impeachment inquiry and the proceedings start
heating up over the Trump Ukraine scandal, the Drudge Report
starts getting more and more openly hostile, not even hiding it,
not even implicitly so, just more and more explicitly portraying
(13:29):
Donald Trump no longer as a besieged hero to the
conservative movement. The image you would have painted in your
mind of Donald John Trump, leader of the free world
at that time, if you were regularly reading the Drudge Report,
was this is an oafish buffoon who is in over
his head, could very well be a corrupt dipshit. And
(13:53):
here's all this reporting that illustrates just how bad things
are getting for President Trump. And this was not done
through the veil of sympathy. You could sense that something
was changing, at least as it had to do with
Matt Drudge, specifically to the point where individuals on other
(14:15):
big conservative media Trump allies start realizing it. And this
was also something that then President Trump started noticing in
late twenty nineteen and reacting to it within the halls
of the White House with a sense of intense displeasure.
He started asking friends, senior White House officials, other allies
(14:35):
who'd be speaking to things like, Hey, what's going on
with Drudge lately? What's the matter with Drudge? While why
does it seem like he hates Trump? All of a sudden,
I thought we were good. Got to the point where
he even asked Jared Kushner to check in, to start
basically investigating and calling around or perhaps even reaching out
(14:56):
to Matt Drudge to figure out why he's giving his
dad in law such a hard time.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Why do you think that Drudge turned on Trump?
Speaker 3 (15:06):
I'm going to quote a former White House official quote.
Trump understands Matt Trudge's influence. He knows he can be
a little mercurial though, and prone to stir the pot.
He also knows Drudge isn't able to be bullied. Matt
doesn't owe his career to anyone and can't be moved
the way others can because he's not afraid, not just
(15:28):
of Trump but in general. So I think that kind
of gives kind of a taste of a thirty thousand
foot view of what was going on there. Brudge kind
of had a sense for the way the winds were
blowing on. This got to a point where in twenty
nineteen and twenty twenty where Matt Drudge learly felt and
thought that, Okay, I don't need to carry all the
(15:52):
water for this guy anymore. One of the things that
really does account for that turn is that he decided
to take this guy, Donald Trump, who he had politically
buddied up to and sort of portrayed himself as a
staunch media ally, and start turning him into what he
(16:12):
craved the most out of the American political landscape, which
was tabloid fodder to run through his influential Internet machine.
That's what he did with Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal.
And if that's the way you're approaching the most powerful
person or people on the face of the planet, and
if you're someone like Matt Drudge, how could you not
(16:33):
want to give Donald Trump that kind of treatment? It
would be a waste of your at least ostensibly stated
mission in life.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
To get an insider perspective, I wanted to talk directly
with former White House officials about this question, so I
tracked down members of Donald Trump's administration and presidential campaign
to try to piece together what they thought the reason
was that Drudge turned on their boss, and I got
a wide range of answers. The first person I spoke
(17:04):
to was Hogan Gidley, who served as Donald Trump's White
House Deputy Press Secretary and worked in the administration from
twenty seventeen to twenty twenty.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
I heard it was all around the border that the
border wall wasn't built fast enough and that's what made
him mad. I don't know if that's true. I just
heard that from some people, you know, high up close
to the president that I worked with every day, and
I heard him in passing we were talking about it.
I said, how do we lose Drudge?
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Or we had him?
Speaker 4 (17:32):
And like, oh no, they were, you know, the judge
was good to us, and then I think he was
mad because we didn't build the wall fast. Enough or something.
That's what I heard.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
And here's Steve Bannon, who worked on Donald Trump's first
presidential campaign and then joined the administration.
Speaker 6 (17:48):
He was definitely off the Trump train as far as
policy goes, right, He just wasn't in the supporter You
could tell that pretty obviously. The site went so negative Trump,
but also so negative conservative and so negative Mega. It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Sam Nunberg, a Trump campaign advisor in twenty fifteen, thinks
the reason could have to do with Trump's personality. The
more time Drudge spent with Trump, Nunberg says, the less
he liked him.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
I think that Drudge played a pivotal role for Donald
in twenty sixteen, and I think it made a pivotal
role hurting him in twenty twenty, turning against him. One
of the biggest questions is going to be what made
him turn against Donald. They're multiple theories. One thing I
would think is the more time Matt spent with Donald,
the less he liked them. You're not going to like
what you see behind the scenes. It's not a nice picture.
(18:39):
After the midterms as well, maybe Drudge saw the writing
on the wall as well, right, he didn't want to
be with the loser himself. Well, look, we'll never really
know the reasons, right, We'll never know. You'll never get
a straight answer. Ultimately, Donald became a victim of MATC
the same way many others have did. Matt MacDonald lose
(19:02):
the elect tune in twenty twenty now, but Trump sure
as hell could. He used his help and he didn't
have it.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Sean Spicer, Trump's former White House Press secretary, said, there
was surprise when Drudge started being critical of Trump, but
then the relationship appeared irreparable.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
There were a couple early shots that sort of surprised people,
and then it was almost like the doors of the
dam opened up and it wasn't going to ever get
closed again.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Sebastian Gorka was deputy Assistant to the President and strategists
in the Trump White House. I asked him the same question.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
Why did he turn on Trump and what happened there?
Speaker 7 (19:38):
Well, there's a complic theories. The only one that you
know is more feasible is that he sold it to
somebody who wanted to attack my former boss, President Trump.
Either that or he just had a wicked case of
you know, Trump derangement syndrome. I don't know and the
guy is such a recluse, I don't know if we'll
ever find out.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Okay, this is something we definitely need to clear up
because a lot of people think Drudge doesn't even run
the Drudge Report anymore. Let's try to get to the
bottom of this as best we can. Drudge's reversal on
Trump has had people like Gorka speculating about whether Drudge
is still involved. Did he sell the site and run
with the money? Did he license his name? Personally, I'm skeptical.
(20:21):
In a previous episode, we heard from sources who had
direct contact with Matt Drudge. They said that, based on
their private conversations with him, he would never let the
site go on in the hands of someone else. Larry O'Connor,
the former editor of Breitbart dot com, said that the
day Drudge steps away or dies, the site will be gone.
That's from Judge's own lips. Hillary Clinton advisor Tracy Seppel,
(20:44):
who had a long running professional relationship with Drudge, predicted
that one day the Drudge Report would simply go dark
and disappear from the Internet. I'm of the mind to
agree with them. What's more, the website still seems to
harbor the same idiosyncratic obsession Drudge always posted about and
would unlikely translate to a new owner. It's unlikely we
(21:05):
get the same Lana del Rey coverage if Drudge wasn't
still the operator. And from private conversations we've had with
people who refuse to participate in this show, it seems
all but certain he still is the maestro of the
Drudge Report. Still, I wanted to dig further, so I
spoke to Matt Drudge biographer Matt lee Shak, author of
(21:25):
The Drudge Revolution. His book went deep into whether Drudge
has sold the site, and Lee Shak says absolutely not.
Speaker 8 (21:36):
One of the reasons people think that Matt sold the
Drudge Report is because it had moved seemingly to the left.
But they don't understand that Matt was never motivated by politics.
He has his political beliefs, but Matt's real motivation has
always been page plicks. And I don't say that disparagingly.
I mean, he is a businessman and it's like we're
(21:57):
all trying to make a living. But his treatment towards
Trump towards the end really was what raised eyebrows and
made people think that he had sold the website. But
I mean, I can tell you as a fact he
has not sold the website. Matt is definitely running the website.
I mean, I can confirm that to you. He was
offered an obseeing some of money by an NBA owner
(22:20):
who I can't name, to sell the website, and he
turned it down. And his reasoning to one of his
friends was that like he would never let somebody run
the website with his name on it, He would never
do that.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Regardless of the true reason that Trump lost drudges support,
the fact remains the fisser costs drudge support on the
right Leishek says there was a significant drop in traffic
from the time Drudge stopped supporting Trump.
Speaker 8 (22:48):
Since he turned on Trump, his page hit went down
between thirty and forty percent from the peak.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
And here's what Steve Bannon says.
Speaker 6 (23:00):
The right hates it, I mean literally hates it.
Speaker 9 (23:02):
But I think the days of Drudge having any impact
or effect over I just don't see it.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Do you think that Drudge turning on Trump and possibly
you know, by proxy, conservatives hurt his business.
Speaker 6 (23:16):
I'm not so sure the site is anywhere near as
big as it was. It's definitely not as influential.
Speaker 9 (23:21):
That there's just no doubt because I'm not so sure
the left has embraced it. I never hear it talked
about on the left of all the guys, and though
nobody ever says you see a Drudge like and I
never hear from awhere on the right.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Among Trump's former staffers, the anger at Drudge's betrayal is palpable.
Here's Sam Nunberg, the campaign staffer from twenty fifteen.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
I still think we deserve an explanation for what he
did for twenty twenty. But that's one thing that I
think we deserve. And if we don't like his explanation,
we don't like it. But I think we deserve the
right to have at least for closure. I think, no
matter what, we're better off with Donald in office than
what we have now and today. The extent that there's
a responsibility that Matt bourns for that, you know, I say,
(24:05):
fucked you, Matt.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
My biggest takeaway from speaking to all these people is
that conservatives made a faulty assumption about Drudge from the
very beginning. Yes, he made a name for himself by
reporting about Bill and Hillary Clinton. Yes he was critical
of President Obama. Yes, he celebrated Trump's rise, but that
didn't make Drudge a party loyalist. He didn't owe anyone
(24:32):
his allegiance, his support, or his favor on his website,
Drudge is an independent person. He is, as he put
it way back in the nineteen nineties, a partisan for news.
He relishes that independence, and anytime someone started to take
his support or friendship for granted, he was more than
happy to revoke it. And I would argue that it
(24:54):
is that unpredictable spirit that made him so successful in
the first place. You don't have to like him, I
have to agree with him, but always know that he'll
say what he thinks consequences be damned. Look, we've been
circling around Matt Drudge for a long time in this podcast,
talking with people who knew him or met him over
the years. But it's time to get even closer. It's
(25:16):
time to bring in a very special guest. In our
next episode, we will speak with someone on the inside,
an actual former editor of The Drudge Report. He's a
reporter who worked closely with Drudge for years, directly on
the site. Someone who knows more about the Drudge Report
than just about anyone, perhaps other than Matt Drudge himself,
(25:37):
someone who can provide new answers to some of the
questions we've been searching for on this show and new
insights into how the Drudge machine actually works. And let
me tell you, this person has a lot to say.
I'm Chris Moody. Be sure to join us next time
for this special episode of Finding Matt Drudge. Remember to
(26:20):
call us at 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.
Popular Podcasts
1. Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
2. Start Here
A straightforward look at the day's top news in 20 minutes. Powered by ABC News. Hosted by Brad Mielke.
3. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.