DRUDGE 2

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<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>escalator /echo</b></font></div>

<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">jrnl fail, fake news</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">whatever happened to? displaced by soc med?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">provocateur --> proto-troll?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">started as gossip rag? // breitbart his biyotch</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">note Brock vast rww conspir hangout at his crib, coultr, tucker, ingraham, conway elves, so inside info on Lewinsky?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">see rather hit</font></div>

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<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">mma tag</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">eg</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/networks-and-outlets/drudge-report">https://www.mediamatters.org/networks-and-outlets/drudge-report</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><a href="https://www.drudgereport.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Drudge Report</a>, a staple of conservative power brokers and right wing political leaders for decades, slowly turned anti-Trump starting late last year, stunning GOP stalwarts.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following The New York Times' bombshell about the president paying just $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017, and no taxes for 15 out of 20 years, the Drudge Report on Monday just destroyed Trump.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Drudge Report is essentially a link aggregator, rewriting headlines and combining links to create a very clear picture of what they want readers to see.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here's how it looks right now:</font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">wiki 7 22 (also in One tho earlier grab]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> <b>Drudge Report</b> (stylized as <b>DRUDGE REPORT</b>) is an American <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_aggregator" title="News aggregator" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">news aggregation</a> website founded by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Drudge" title="Matt Drudge" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Matt Drudge</a>,<sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[4]</a></sup> and run with the help of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hurt" title="Charles Hurt" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Charles Hurt</a><sup id="cite_ref-huffpo512_2-1" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-huffpo512-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[2]</a></sup> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Halper" title="Daniel Halper" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Daniel Halper</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[5]</a></sup> The site was generally regarded as a conservative<sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[7]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-8" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[8]</a></sup> publication, though its ownership and political leanings have been questioned following business model changes in mid-to-late 2019.<sup id="cite_ref-9" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[9]</a></sup> The site consists mainly of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlinks" class="mw-redirect" title="Hyperlinks" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">links</a> to news stories from other outlets about politics, entertainment, and current events; it also has links to many columnists.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Drudge Report originated in 1995 as a weekly subscriber-based email dispatch.<sup id="cite_ref-EoAJ_3-1" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-EoAJ-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[3]</a></sup> It was the first news source to break the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton%E2%80%93Lewinsky_scandal" title="Clinton–Lewinsky scandal" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Clinton–Lewinsky scandal</a> to the public, after <i style=""><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek" title="Newsweek" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Newsweek</a></i> decided to "kill the story</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">".</span><sup id="cite_ref-scoop_10-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-scoop-10" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[10]</a></sup></font></p><div id="toc" class="toc" role="navigation" aria-labelledby="mw-toc-heading" style="border: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); background-color: rgb(248, 249, 250); padding: 7px; display: table; clear: left;"><input type="checkbox" role="button" id="toctogglecheckbox" class="toctogglecheckbox" style="margin: 0px; position: absolute; opacity: 0; z-index: -1; display: none;" /><div class="toctitle" lang="en" dir="ltr" style="text-align: center; direction: ltr;">
</div><ul style="list-style: none; margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Origins" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">1</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Origins</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Content" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">2</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Content</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Design" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">3</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Design</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Political_leanings" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">4</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Political leanings</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Business_model_and_viewership_decline" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">5</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Business model and viewership decline</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Influence" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">6</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Influence</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Notable_stories" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">7</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Notable stories</span></font></a><ul style="list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-8" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Monica_Lewinsky_scandal" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">7.1</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Monica Lewinsky scandal</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-9" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Hillary_Clinton_for_President" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">7.2</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Hillary Clinton for President</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-10" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Swift_Boat_Veterans_for_Truth" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">7.3</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Swift Boat Veterans for Truth</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-11" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Obama_photo" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">7.4</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Obama photo</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-12" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Prince_Harry_in_Afghanistan" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">7.5</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Prince Harry in Afghanistan</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-13" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#U.S.Senate_problems" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">7.6</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">U.S. Senate problems</span></font></a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-14" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Controversial_stories,errors_and_questions_about_sourcing" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Controversial stories, errors and questions about sourcing</span></font></a><ul style="list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-15" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Exclusives" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8.1</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Exclusives</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-16" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Sidney_Blumenthal_lawsuit" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8.2</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Sidney Blumenthal lawsuit</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-17" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Alleged_John_Kerry_intern_scandal" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8.3</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Alleged John Kerry intern scandal</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-18" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Alleged_Bill_Clinton_illegitimate_child" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8.4</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Alleged Bill Clinton illegitimate child</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-19" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Alleged_heckling_of_Republican_Senators_by_CNN_reporter" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8.5</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Alleged heckling of Republican Senators by CNN reporter</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-20" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Oprah_and_Sarah_Palin" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8.6</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;"><i>Oprah</i> and Sarah Palin</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-21" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Ashley_Todd_attack_hoax" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8.7</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Ashley Todd attack hoax</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-22" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Birther_conspiracy_theories" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8.8</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Birther conspiracy theories</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-23" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Hillary_Clinton's_2016_campaign" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8.9</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-24" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Conspiracy_theories_about_the_2017_Las_Vegas_shooting" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8.10</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Conspiracy theories about the 2017 Las Vegas shooting</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-25" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Immigration" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">8.11</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">Immigration</span></font></a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-26" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#References" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">9</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">References</span></font></a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-27" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#External_links" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em;">10</span><span class="toctext" style="display: table-cell; text-decoration: inherit;">External links</span></font></a></li></ul></div><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Origins">Origins</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h2><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Drudge Report started in 1995 as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip" title="Gossip" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">gossip</a> column focusing on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_States" title="Cinema of the United States" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Hollywood</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,D.C." title="Washington, D.C." style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Washington, D.C.</a><sup id="cite_ref-Blumenthatl_11-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-Blumenthatl-11" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[11]</a></sup> Matt Drudge began the email-based newsletter from an apartment in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood,California" class="mw-redirect" title="Hollywood, California" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Hollywood, California</a>, using his connections with industry and media insiders to break stories, sometimes before they hit the mainstream media. In its early days Drudge maintained the website from his home in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Beach,Florida" title="Miami Beach, Florida" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Miami Beach, Florida</a>, with help from assistants in story selection and headline writing. <b>His first assistant was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Breitbart" title="Andrew Breitbart" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Andrew Breitbart</a>.</b></span><sup id="cite_ref-sappell_12-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-sappell-12" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><b>[12]</b></a></sup><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Breitbart, who described himself as "Matt Drudge's bitch"</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">,<sup id="cite_ref-biyatch_13-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-biyatch-13" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[13]</a></sup> worked the afternoon shift at the Drudge Report,<sup id="cite_ref-afternoon_14-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-afternoon-14" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[14]</a></sup> at the same time as running his own website, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News" title="Breitbart News" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Breitbart News</a>, which provided a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative" class="mw-redirect" title="Conservative" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">conservative</a> perspective for people in the Los Angeles entertainment industry</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-breit-infidel_15-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-breit-infidel-15" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[15]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ziegler(talk_show_host)" title="John Ziegler (talk show host)" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">John Ziegler</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> has said that <b>Drudge blocked Breitbart from posting content critical of </b></span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama" title="Barack Obama" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;"><b>Barack Obama</b></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b> during the 2008 campaign for the US presidency</b>.</span><sup id="cite_ref-16" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-16" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[16]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 2010, Drudge added former </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times" title="The Washington Times" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Washington Times</a> columnist </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Joseph Curl to the Drudge Report staff.</span><sup id="cite_ref-CSGD_17-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-CSGD-17" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[17]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> In 2011, he added to the staff Charles Hurt, most recently the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Washington bureau chief of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post" title="New York Post" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">New York Post</a> and a columnist for The Washington Times.</span><sup id="cite_ref-huffpo512_2-2" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-huffpo512-2" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">[</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-huffpo512-2" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">2]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Curl, who served as morning shift editor, left the site in 2014 and, with Drudge's blessing, in January 2015 launched his own aggregator </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Right Read</i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, for </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Washington Times</i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-18" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-18" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[18]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Drudge, who began his website in 1997 as a supplement to his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar" title="United States dollar" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">$</a>10 per year e-mail newsletter,<sup id="cite_ref-porkies_19-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-porkies-19" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[19]</a></sup> received national attention in 1996 when he broke the news that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kemp" title="Jack Kemp" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Jack Kemp</a> would be Republican <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dole" title="Bob Dole" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Bob Dole</a>'s running mate in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.presidential_election,1996" class="mw-redirect" title="U.S. presidential election, 1996" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">1996 US presidential election</a>. In 1998, Drudge made national waves when he broke the news that <i style=""><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek" title="Newsweek" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Newsweek</a></i> magazine had information on an inappropriate relationship between "a White House intern" and President <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton" title="Bill Clinton" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Bill Clinton</a>—the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Lewinsky_scandal" class="mw-redirect" title="Monica Lewinsky scandal" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Monica Lewinsky scandal</a>—but was withholding publication.<sup id="cite_ref-drudgemonica_20-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-drudgemonica-20" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[20]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-newsweekheld_21-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-newsweekheld-21" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[21]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-brillscontent_22-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-brillscontent-22" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[22]</a></sup> After Drudge's report came out, <i style="">Newsweek</i> published the story</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-newsweekstory_23-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-newsweekstory-23" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[23]</a></sup></font></p><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Content">Content</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h2><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Drudge Report site consists mainly of selected<sup id="cite_ref-lawyer_24-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-lawyer-24" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[24]</a></sup> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink" title="Hyperlink" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">hyperlinks</a> to news websites all over the world, each link carrying a headline written by Drudge or his editors. The linked stories are generally hosted on the external websites of mainstream media outlets. It occasionally includes stories written by Drudge himself, usually two or three paragraphs in length. They generally concern a story about to be published in a major magazine or newspaper. Drudge occasionally publishes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings" title="Nielsen ratings" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Nielsen</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitron" class="mw-redirect" title="Arbitron" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Arbitron</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_BookScan" class="mw-redirect" title="Nielsen BookScan" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">BookScan</a> ratings, or early election <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_poll" title="Exit poll" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">exit polls</a> which are otherwise not made available to the public.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In April 2009, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press" title="Associated Press" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Associated Press</a> announced that it would be examining the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use" title="Fair use" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">fair use</a> doctrine, used by sites like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google" title="Google" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Google</a> and the Drudge Report to justify the use of AP content without payment.<sup id="cite_ref-25" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-25" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[25]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On May 4, 2009, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Attorney_General" class="mw-redirect" title="US Attorney General" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">US Attorney General</a>'s office issued a warning to employees in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts" title="Massachusetts" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Massachusetts</a> not to visit the Drudge Report and other sites because of malicious code contained in some of the advertising on the website.<sup id="cite_ref-26" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-26" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[26]</a></sup> In March 2010, antivirus company <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avast_Software" class="mw-redirect" title="Avast Software" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Avast!</a> warned that advertising at the Drudge Report, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times" title="The New York Times" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The New York Times</a></i>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo" class="mw-redirect" title="Yahoo" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Yahoo</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google" title="Google" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Google</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace" class="mw-redirect" title="MySpace" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">MySpace</a> and other sites carried malware that could infect computers. "The most compromised ad delivery platforms were Yield Manager and Fimserve, but a number of smaller ad systems, including Myspace, were also found to be delivering malware on a lesser scale," said Avast Virus Labs.<sup id="cite_ref-27" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-27" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[27]</a></sup></font></p><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Design">Design</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h2><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The site's design has seen few changes since its debut in 1997. Drudge has experimented with temporary, relatively minor design tweaks, including using all <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayscale" title="Grayscale" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">black-and-white</a> pictures for a period in August 2017<sup id="cite_ref-28" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-28" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[28]</a></sup> and using colored text for holidays instead of the standard black throughout the site's existence; in all cases, the basic layout remained consistent throughout its existence.<sup class="noprint Inline-Template Template-Fact" style="line-height: 1; white-space: nowrap;">[<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span title="This claim needs references to reliable sources. (August 2017)">citation needed</span></a></i>]</sup> It remains entirely written in unscripted <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML" title="HTML" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">HTML</a>, with a mostly monochromatic color scheme of black boldface monospaced font text on a plain white background. The Drudge Report has been described by Cheryl Woodard, co-founder of <i>PC</i>, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macworld" title="Macworld" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Macworld</a></i>, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_World(magazine)" class="mw-redirect" title="PC World (magazine)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">PC World</a></i> and <i>Publish</i> magazines, as "a big, haphazard mishmash of links and photos"<sup id="cite_ref-guide_29-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-guide-29" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[29]</a></sup> and by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rahmel" title="Dan Rahmel" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Dan Rahmel</a> as "popular despite a plain appearance".<sup id="cite_ref-popular5_30-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-popular5-30" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[30]</a></sup> The Drudge Report website is simple and, according to Paul Armstrong of <i>webwithoutwords.com</i>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retro" class="mw-redirect" title="Retro" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">retro</a> in feel.<sup id="cite_ref-31" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-31" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[31]</a></sup> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Fried" class="mw-redirect" title="Jason Fried" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Jason Fried</a> of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basecamp(company)" title="Basecamp (company)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Basecamp</a> called it "one of the best designed sites on the web".<sup id="cite_ref-32" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-32" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[32]</a></sup> It consists of a banner headline and a number of other selected headlines in three columns in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monospaced_font" title="Monospaced font" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">monospaced font</a>. Most link to an outside source, usually the online edition of a newspaper, which hosts the story. When no such source is available, either because the story is "developing",<sup id="cite_ref-33" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-33" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[33]</a></sup> with little known details at the time, or is an exclusive scoop, a special page is created on the Drudge Report servers, which contains text and sometimes images.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stories on the site are ascribed different levels of importance, which Matt Drudge rates at his editorial discretion. The <i>Report</i> almost always holds one major story above the masthead logo, usually just one sentence hyperlinked to the most important story of the day. Other stories surrounding the main headline can be found in the upper left-hand side of the page and link to more specific articles dealing with aspects of the headline story. The standard story, either the headline or links below the logo, is written in black. The majority of stories are laid out in three columns beneath the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nameplate(publishing)" title="Nameplate (publishing)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">masthead</a>; at the bottom of each column are various links: newspapers and magazines in the left column, columnists in the middle column, and a collection of wire service links and miscellaneous links to archives, e-mail, site stats, and a box to submit anonymous tips at the right. "Weather Action," a static page of links to weather data; and "Quake Sheet," with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake" title="Earthquake" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">earthquake</a> monitoring, each have their own hosted page on the <i>Drudge Report</i> servers. The newest stories and those Drudge considers most important are in red, all under a single major headline in large bold type. For especially important breaking stories, especially if they are still emerging, Drudge places art of a flashing red light on the screen.<sup id="cite_ref-34" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-34" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[34]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although the site initially featured very few images, it is now usually illustrated with five or six photographs. Generally the images, like the linked headlines, are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotlinking" class="mw-redirect" title="Hotlinking" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">hotlinked</a> from the servers of other news agencies.<sup class="noprint Inline-Template Template-Fact" style="line-height: 1; white-space: nowrap;">[</sup></font></p><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Political_leanings">Political leanings</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h2><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Matt Drudge has said that he is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States" title="Conservatism in the United States" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">conservative</a>, but "more of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism" title="Populism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">populist</a>".<sup id="cite_ref-35" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-35" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[35]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-miaminewtimes_36-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-miaminewtimes-36" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[36]</a></sup> Some had regarded the Drudge Report as conservative in tone</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">,</span><sup id="cite_ref-37" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-37" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[37]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-FT-cons_38-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-FT-cons-38" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[38]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-w-times-cons_39-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-w-times-cons-39" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[39]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-edandpub_40-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-edandpub-40" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[40]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-mediap_41-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-mediap-41" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[41]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-cjon_42-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-cjon-42" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[42]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> and it has been referred to in the media as "a conservative news aggregator".</span><sup id="cite_ref-43" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-43" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[43]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> In 2008, Richard Siklos, an editor of </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune(magazine)" title="Fortune (magazine)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Fortune</a></i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> magazine, called the Drudge Report a "conservative bullhorn".</span><sup id="cite_ref-siklos_44-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-siklos-44" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[44]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Peter Wallsten, writing in the </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times" title="Los Angeles Times" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Los Angeles Times</a></i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, labeled Drudge a "well-known conservative warrior";</span><sup id="cite_ref-45" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-45" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[45]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Saul Hansell, writing in </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times" title="The New York Times" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The New York Times</a></i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, referred to him as a "conservative muckraker";</span><sup id="cite_ref-muck_46-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-muck-46" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[46]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> and </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald" title="Glenn Greenwald" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Glenn Greenwald</a> was quoted in <i style=""><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York(magazine)" title="New York (magazine)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">New York</a></i> magazine in August 2007 as calling him a "right-wing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_writer" title="Hack writer" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">hack</a>"</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-nymagx_47-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-nymagx-47" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[47]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jesse Swick of </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Republic" title="The New Republic" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The New Republic</a></i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> notes that the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">Drudge Report frequently links to stories that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial" title="Climate change denial" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">cast doubt</a> upon global warming. "[Drudge] loves a press release from Senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Inhofe" class="mw-redirect" title="James Inhofe" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Inhofe</a> almost as much as he loves taking pot shots at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore" title="Al Gore" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Al Gore</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> ... It's like flashing tasty images of popcorn and sodas between frames at movie theaters, only much less subtle."</span><sup id="cite_ref-48" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-48" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[48]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Shapiro" title="Ben Shapiro" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Ben Shapiro</a> wrote, "The American left can't restrict Internet usage or ban talk radio, so it de-legitimizes these news sources. Ripping alternative news sources as illegitimate is the left's only remaining option -- it cannot compete with the right wing in the new media ... They call Matt Drudge a muckraker and a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism" title="Yellow journalism" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">yellow journalist</a>."</span><sup id="cite_ref-49" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-49" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[49]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A study in 2005 placed the Drudge Report "slightly left of center".</b><sup id="cite_ref-ucla-groseclose_50-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-ucla-groseclose-50" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[50]</a></sup> "One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites", said <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Groseclose" title="Timothy Groseclose" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Timothy Groseclose</a>, the head of the study. "Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media."<sup id="cite_ref-ucla-groseclose_50-1" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-ucla-groseclose-50" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[50]</a></sup> Professor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Liberman" title="Mark Liberman" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Mark Liberman</a> critiqued the statistical model used in this study on the basis that model assumed conservative politicians do not care about the ideological position of think tanks they cite, while liberal politicians do.<sup id="cite_ref-Language_Log_51-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-Language_Log-51" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[51]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-Language_Log.52-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-Language_Log.-52" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[52]</a></sup> <b>The study was also criticized by media watchdog Spinwatch for its methodology and its authors' ties to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_think_tank" class="mw-redirect" title="Conservative think tank" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">conservative think tanks</a></b>.<sup id="cite_ref-53" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-53" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[53]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">In 2015 and 2016, Drudge repeatedly featured pro-Trump headlines during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_presidential_primaries,2016" class="mw-redirect" title="Republican Party presidential primaries, 2016" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Republican Party presidential primaries</a>, leading <i style=""><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon(website)" class="mw-redirect" title="Salon (website)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Salon</a></i> and <i style=""><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politico" title="Politico" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Politico</a></i> to describe Drudge as "all in" for Trump.<sup id="cite_ref-54" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-54" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[54]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-politico.com_55-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-politico.com-55" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[55]</a></sup> During the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_inquiry_against_Donald_Trump" title="Impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump</a> of 2019, the Drudge Report began aggregating what <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN_Business" title="CNN Business" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">CNN Business</a> called "an overwhelming amount of negative news for the Trump White House". CNN speculated that this meant there had been a falling out</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-56" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-56" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[56]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> <b>In 2019, </b></span><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasmussen_Reports" title="Rasmussen Reports" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Rasmussen Reports</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> reported that </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Drudge" title="Matt Drudge" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Matt Drudge</a></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b> had sold the site and was no longer involved in its operations, which would also explain the change in editorial direction; however, that reporting was not confirmed</b>.</span><sup id="cite_ref-maybesold_1-1" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-maybesold-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[1]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-57" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-57" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[57]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">By 2020, some prominent conservatives — including President <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump" title="Donald Trump" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Donald Trump</a> — had concluded that the Drudge Report had abandoned its conservative ideology, with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News" title="Fox News" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Fox News</a> primetime host <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Carlson" title="Tucker Carlson" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Tucker Carlson</a> stating, "Matt Drudge is now firmly a man of the progressive left.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"</span><sup id="cite_ref-58" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-58" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[58]</a></sup></font></p><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Business_model_and_viewership_decline">Business model and viewership decline</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h2><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matt Drudge's business entity in Florida is a privately owned <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability_company" title="Limited liability company" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">limited liability company</a> called Digital, LLC.<sup id="cite_ref-59" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-59" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[59]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-60" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-60" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[60]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-61" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-61" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[61]</a></sup> Drudge applied for and was granted a U.S. Trademark registration for the phrase "Drudge Report" on January 15, 2019, filed on May 15, 2018.<sup id="cite_ref-62" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-62" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[62]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-63" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-63" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[63]</a></sup> The registration excludes the word "Report" from protection outside of the exact two-word phrase use and is for "standard characters without claim to any particular font style, size, or color."</font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revenue for the Drudge Report is driven by advertising that was managed for 20 years by Intermarkets, Inc. During the summer of 2019, after many years of being known for "changing nothing" about the website, Drudge advertising shifted to a new company by the name of Granite Cubed. The current ownership, strategy and outlook for the Drudge Report is held close as private information.<sup id="cite_ref-64" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-64" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[64]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">October 2019, the Drudge Report began linking to articles which were increasingly critical of Trump, reportedly the result of Drudge himself becoming "exasperated" by the president.<sup id="cite_ref-65" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-65" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[65]</a></sup> This coincided with a near 30% decrease in traffic metrics for the Drudge website in the last months of 2019</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">—from a 90 day-ago ranking of #637 in global internet engagement as of July to #844 in December.</span><sup id="cite_ref-66" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-66" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[66]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> The site's readership briefly rebounded in March 2020 as the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic" title="COVID-19 pandemic" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">COVID-19 pandemic</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> escalated, but continued to decline to new record lows as the year went on.</span><sup id="cite_ref-67" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-67" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[67]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">After a Comscore data report showing a year over year </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">decline of 38 percent from August 2019 to August 2020, President Trump tweeted, "Such an honor! Drudge is down 40% plus since he became Fake News. Most importantly, he's bleeding profusely, and is no longer "hot". But others are! Lost ALL Trumpers."</span></font></p><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Influence">Influence</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h2><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>In 2006, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Halperin" title="Mark Halperin" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Mark Halperin</a> wrote that "Drudge's coverage affects the media's political coverage", </b>effectively steering it towards what Halperin calls "the most salacious aspects of American politics".<sup id="cite_ref-abctone_68-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-abctone-68" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[68]</a></sup> In <i style="">The Way To Win</i>, a book written by Halperin and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F.Harris" title="John F. Harris" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">John Harris</a>, Drudge is called "the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Cronkite" title="Walter Cronkite" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Walter Cronkite</a> of his era".<sup id="cite_ref-abctone_68-1" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-abctone-68" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[68]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-waytowin_69-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-waytowin-69" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[69]</a></sup> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party(United_States)" title="Democratic Party (United States)" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Democratic Party</a> strategist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lehane" title="Chris Lehane" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Chris Lehane</a> also said in 2006 "phones start ringing" whenever Drudge breaks a story, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_McKinnon" title="Mark McKinnon" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Mark McKinnon</a>, a former media advisor to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">George W. Bush</a>, said that he checked the site 30–40 times per day</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-abctone_68-2" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-abctone-68" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[68]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Wallsten analyzed the data derived from a detailed content analysis of print, broadcast and blog discussions during the last five weeks of the 2008 campaign. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">Rather than the broad impact posited by professional political observers, Wallsten found that, even on issues where the site should be expected to have its largest impact, the stories highlighted on the Drudge Report exert a fairly inconsistent influence over what traditional media outlets chose to cover. Specifically, the time series analysis presented by Wallsten shows evidence of a "Drudge effect" on print and broadcast coverage for only five of the 10 political scandals that received the most attention on the Drudge Report between September 30 and November 3, 2008</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-70" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-70" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[70]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matt Drudge has been criticized by other media news personalities: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_O%27Reilly(commentator)" class="mw-redirect" title="Bill O'Reilly (commentator)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Bill O'Reilly</a> twice called Drudge a "threat to democracy" in response to Drudge disclosing his book sales figures,<sup id="cite_ref-drudgeoreilly_71-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-drudgeoreilly-71" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[71]</a></sup> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Olbermann" title="Keith Olbermann" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Keith Olbermann</a> referred to Drudge as "an idiot with a modem".<sup id="cite_ref-wapopundit_72-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-wapopundit-72" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[72]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Drudge, along with his website, was labeled one of the "Top 10 anti-Barack Obama conservatives" by the US editor of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph" title="The Daily Telegraph" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The Daily Telegraph</a></i> in February 2009.<sup id="cite_ref-73" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-73" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[73]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to its media influence, the Drudge Report has influenced design elements on other sites, some with opposing viewpoints<sup id="cite_ref-Drudgeretort_74-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-Drudgeretort-74" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[74]</a></sup> and some which use the same format for listing news. A left-leaning<sup id="cite_ref-75" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-75" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[75]</a></sup> parody site called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Retort" class="mw-redirect" title="Drudge Retort" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Drudge Retort</a> was founded in 1998 as "a send-up of Mr. Drudge's breathless style".<sup id="cite_ref-nyt-retort_76-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-nyt-retort-76" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[76]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-retort-author_77-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-retort-author-77" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[77]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-richtel_78-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-richtel-78" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[78]</a></sup> According to online analytics data for April 2010 from the Newspaper Marketing Agency, the Drudge Report was then—now over ten years ago—the number one site referrer for all online UK commercial newspaper websites.<sup id="cite_ref-79" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-79" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[79]</a></sup></font></p><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Notable_stories">Notable stories</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h2><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><span class="mw-headline" id="Monica_Lewinsky_scandal" style="">Monica Lewinsky scandal</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">The Drudge Report originally attained prominence when it was the first to report what came to be known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewinsky_scandal" class="mw-redirect" title="Lewinsky scandal" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Lewinsky scandal</a>. It published the story on January 17, 1998, showing that <i style=""><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek" title="Newsweek" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Newsweek</a></i> had turned down the story.<sup id="cite_ref-80" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-80" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">[80]</a></sup></font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Hillary_Clinton_for_President">Hillary Clinton for President</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In October 2007, during the early months of the Democratic primary for the 2008 presidential campaign, the Drudge Report broke a story, "Queen of the Quarter: Hillary Crushes Obama in Surprise Fund-Raising Surge," and, "$27 Million, Sources Tell Drudge Report." <i>The New York Times</i> said, "Within minutes, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's fund-raising success was injected via Drudge into the day's political news on the Internet and cable television."<sup id="cite_ref-81" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-81" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[81]</a></sup></font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Swift_Boat_Veterans_for_Truth">Swift Boat Veterans for Truth</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">During the 2004 US presidential campaign, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Boat_Veterans_for_Truth" class="mw-redirect" title="Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Swift Boat Veterans for Truth</a> group made claims about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry" title="John Kerry" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">John Kerry</a>'s war record, which were mentioned by Drudge and investigated by major newspapers and TV networks.<sup id="cite_ref-abctone_68-3" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-abctone-68" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[68]</a></sup> The book <i style="">Unfit for Command: Swiftboat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry</i> became a best-seller in part due to its promotion in the Drudge Report.</font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Obama_photo">Obama photo</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Drudge<sup id="cite_ref-82" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-82" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[82]</a></sup> published a photo of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama" title="Barack Obama" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Barack Obama</a> in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_people" class="mw-redirect" title="Somali people" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Somali</a> tribal dress on February 25, 200</b>8,<sup id="cite_ref-83" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-83" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[83]</a></sup> and reported that the photo had been sent to him by a Clinton campaign staffer.<sup id="cite_ref-84" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-84" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[84]</a></sup> The publication of the photograph resulted in a brief war of words between the Clinton and Obama campaign organizations.</font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Prince_Harry_in_Afghanistan">Prince Harry in Afghanistan</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On February 28, 2008, Drudge published an article noting that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Harry" class="mw-redirect" title="Prince Harry" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Prince Harry</a> was serving with his regiment in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan" title="Afghanistan" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Afghanistan</a>. Prince Harry was ten weeks into a front-line deployment in Afghanistan that was subject to a voluntary news blackout by the UK press.<sup id="cite_ref-85" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-85" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[85]</a></sup> The blackout was designed to protect Prince Harry and the men serving with him from being specifically targeted by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban" title="Taliban" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Taliban</a>. An <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia" title="Australia" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Australian</a> weekly women's magazine <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Idea" title="New Idea" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">New Idea</a></i> had broken the story in January,<sup id="cite_ref-86" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-86" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[86]</a></sup> but it was not followed up at the time. The <i>New Idea</i> editors claimed ignorance of any news blackout.<sup id="cite_ref-New_Idea_pleads_87-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-New_Idea_pleads-87" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[87]</a></sup> Then a German newspaper <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Kurier" title="Berliner Kurier" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Berliner Kurier</a></i> published a short piece on February 28, also before Drudge.<sup id="cite_ref-nonexlusive_88-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-nonexlusive-88" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[88]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Drudge subsequently claimed the report as an exclusive. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_of_the_General_Staff(United_Kingdom)" title="Chief of the General Staff (United Kingdom)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Chief of the General Staff</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dannatt,Baron_Dannatt" class="mw-redirect" title="Richard Dannatt, Baron Dannatt" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Sir Richard Dannatt</a>, professional head of the British Army, said: "I am very disappointed that foreign websites have decided to run this story without consulting us".<sup id="cite_ref-Dannatt_89-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-Dannatt-89" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[89]</a></sup> The Prince's tour of duty was prematurely ended, since his unit might have been targeted by large-scale <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_attacks" class="mw-redirect" title="Suicide attacks" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">suicide attacks</a> intended to kill the Prince.<sup id="cite_ref-90" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-90" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[90]</a></sup></font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="U.S.Senate_problems">U.S. Senate problems</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On March 9, 2010, The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_at_Arms_of_the_United_States_Senate" title="Sergeant at Arms of the United States Senate" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Senate Sergeant-at-Arms</a> claimed that the site was "responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate...Please avoid using [this] site until the Senate resolves this issue...The Senate has been swamped the last couples [<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic" title="Sic" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">sic</a></i>] days with this issue." The Drudge Report countered stating that "it served more than 29 million pages Monday without an e-mail complaint about 'pop ups,' or the site serving 'viruses'."<sup id="cite_ref-91" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-91" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[91]</a></sup></font></p><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span id="Controversial_stories.2C_errors_and_questions_about_sourcing"><span class="mw-headline" id="Controversial_stories,errors_and_questions_about_sourcing">Controversial stories, errors and questions about sourcing</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></span></font></h2><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Exclusives">Exclusives</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Research by the media magazine <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brill%27s_Content" class="mw-redirect" title="Brill's Content" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Brill's Content</a> in 1998 cast doubt on the accuracy of the majority of the "exclusives" claimed by the Drudge Report. Of the 51 stories claimed as exclusives from January to September 1998, the magazine found that 31 (61%) were actually exclusive stories. Of those, 32% were untrue, 36% were true and the remaining 32% were of debatable accuracy.<sup id="cite_ref-brillscontent_22-1" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-brillscontent-22" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[22]</a></sup></font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Sidney_Blumenthal_lawsuit">Sidney Blumenthal lawsuit</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 1997, the Drudge Report reported that incoming White House assistant </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Blumenthal" title="Sidney Blumenthal" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Sidney Blumenthal</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> beat his wife and was covering it up. Drudge retracted the story the next day and apologized, saying that he was given bad information, but Blumenthal filed a $30 million libel lawsuit against Drudge. After four years Blumenthal dropped his lawsuit, saying that the suit had cost him tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. He agreed to pay $2,500 to Drudge's Los Angeles attorney for travel costs, claiming that Drudge was "backed by unlimited funds from political supporters who use a tax-exempt foundation".</span><sup id="cite_ref-waposettlement_92-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-waposettlement-92" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[92]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-drudgequote_93-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-drudgequote-93" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[93]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-wimpy_94-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-wimpy-94" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[94]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> The Individual Rights Foundation, led by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative" class="mw-redirect" title="Conservative" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">conservative</a> activist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz" title="David Horowitz" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">David Horowitz</a>, paid Drudge's legal fees </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">in the Blumenthal lawsuit. Judge Paul Friedman, a Bill Clinton appointee, noted in the judgment that Drudge "is not a reporter, a journalist, or a newsgatherer. He is, as he admits himself, simply a purveyor of gossip."</span><sup id="cite_ref-gossip_95-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-gossip-95" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[95]</a></sup></font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Alleged_John_Kerry_intern_scandal">Alleged John Kerry intern scandal</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_presidential_election" title="2004 United States presidential election" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2004 Presidential campaign</a>, Drudge ran a story quoting General <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Clark" title="Wesley Clark" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Wesley Clark</a>, in which Clark claimed that the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry" title="John Kerry" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">John Kerry</a> campaign would implode over an intern affair. Drudge reported that other news outlets were investigating the alleged affair, but removed it from the site shortly afterwards when the other news outlets dropped their investigations.<sup id="cite_ref-alexandrapolier_96-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-alexandrapolier-96" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[96]</a></sup></font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Alleged_Bill_Clinton_illegitimate_child">Alleged Bill Clinton illegitimate child</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 1999, the Drudge Report announced that it had viewed a videotape which was the basis of a </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star(magazine)" title="Star (magazine)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Star</a></i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> magazine and </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Copy" class="mw-redirect" title="Hard Copy" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Hard Copy</a></i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> story. Under the headline, "Woman Names Bill Clinton Father Of Son In Shocking Video Confession", Drudge reported a videotaped "confession" by a former prostitute who claimed that her son was fathered by </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton" title="Bill Clinton" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Bill Clinton</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-97" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-97" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[97]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> After a paternity test using a sample of Clinton's DNA found on the dress belonging to </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Lewinsky" title="Monica Lewinsky" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Monica Lewinsky</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, a </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Star</i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> source told </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time(magazine)" title="Time (magazine)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Time</a></i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> magazine that <b>"there was no match, not even close</b>."</span><sup id="cite_ref-98" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-98" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[98]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Drudge reported these findings in 1999, but during the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election" title="2016 United States presidential election" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">2016 presidential election</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Dru</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">dge revived the story that the child, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danney_Williams" title="Danney Williams" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Danney Williams</a>, then a 30 year old man, really was Clinton's illegitimate son by twisting established facts.</span><sup id="cite_ref-99" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-99" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">[</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-99" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">99]</a></sup></font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Alleged_heckling_of_Republican_Senators_by_CNN_reporter">Alleged heckling of Republican Senators by CNN reporter</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On April 1, 2007, Drudge cited an unnamed "official" source saying that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN" title="CNN" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">CNN</a> reporter <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ware" title="Michael Ware" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Michael Ware</a> had "heckled" Republican Senators McCain and Graham during a live press conference.<sup id="cite_ref-drudgeheckle_100-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-drudgeheckle-100" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[100]</a></sup> Drudge reported that:</font></p><blockquote class="templatequote" style="overflow: hidden; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px 40px; border-left: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An official at the press conference called Ware's conduct "outrageous," saying, "here you have two United States Senators in Baghdad giving first-hand reports while Ware is laughing and mocking their comments. I've never witnessed such disrespect. This guy is an activist not a reporter."</font></p><div class="templatequotecite" style="margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; padding-left: 1.6em; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— <cite style="font-style: inherit;">Matthew Drudge, Drudge Report</cite></font></div></blockquote><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, a video hosted by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rawstory" class="mw-redirect" title="Rawstory" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Rawstory</a> shows that Ware did not make a sound nor ask any question during the press conference.<sup id="cite_ref-101" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-101" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[101]</a></sup></font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Oprah_and_Sarah_Palin">Oprah and Sarah Palin</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On September 5, 2008, the Drudge Report reported that <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oprah_Winfrey_Show" title="The Oprah Winfrey Show" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Oprah</a></i> staffers were "sharply divided on the merits of booking Sarah Palin". Drudge said that he obtained the information from an anonymous source. Winfrey responded in a written statement to news outlets saying, "The item in today's Drudge Report is categorically untrue. There has been absolutely no discussion about having Sarah Palin on my show. At the beginning of this presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates." Oprah Winfrey's public statement came after she had already endorsed Barack Obama for president on <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_King_Live" title="Larry King Live" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Larry King Live</a></i> in 2007.<sup id="cite_ref-102" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-102" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[102]</a></sup> Drudge was accused by some commentators of planting a false story for political ends.<sup id="cite_ref-103" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-103" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[103]</a></sup></font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Ashley_Todd_attack_hoax">Ashley Todd attack hoax</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On October 23, 2008, Drudge published an unconfirmed exclusive story regarding <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Todd" class="mw-redirect" title="Ashley Todd" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Ashley Todd</a>, the 20-year-old employee<sup id="cite_ref-storm_104-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-storm-104" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[104]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-todd_employee_105-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-todd_employee-105" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[105]</a></sup> of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Republicans" title="College Republicans" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">College Republican National Committee (CRNC)</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain" title="John McCain" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">John McCain</a> volunteer who had allegedly been attacked by a black male for having a McCain sticker on her car in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh" title="Pittsburgh" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Pittsburgh</a>. Drudge reported the story without a link but as "developing", titling the headline "Shock: McCain Volunteer Attacked and Mutilated in Pittsburgh – "B" carved into 20 yr old Woman's Face".<sup id="cite_ref-HuffPo_106-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-HuffPo-106" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[106]</a></sup> The story set off a "storm of media attention",<sup id="cite_ref-storm_104-1" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-storm-104" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[104]</a></sup> being quickly picked up by many conservative bloggers and right-wing talk radio show hosts, all citing the Drudge Report as their source. It was also reported in newspapers and TV both in the US and around the world.<sup id="cite_ref-107" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-107" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[107]</a></sup> The story was confirmed to be a hoax perpetrated by Todd and, according to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_Points_Memo" title="Talking Points Memo" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Talking Points Memo</a>, spread to reporters by McCain's Pennsylvania Communications Director.<sup id="cite_ref-108" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-108" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[108]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Drudge then printed a retraction of the story,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> including links to the news stories detailing that the attack had been a hoax, and that Ashley Todd had performed a similar "attack" on herself while volunteering in a local </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul" title="Ron Paul" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Ron Paul</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grassroots" title="Grassroots" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">grassroots</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> group. She was later asked to leave the group because of the hoax.</span></font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Birther_conspiracy_theories">Birther conspiracy theories</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Drudge Report promoted birther conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen.<sup id="cite_ref-109" class="reference" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-109" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[109]</a></sup></h3><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span id="Hillary_Clinton.27s_2016_campaign"><span class="mw-headline" id="Hillary_Clinton's_2016_campaign">Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On August 8, 2016, Drudge Report used a photo of Democratic nominee <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton" title="Hillary Clinton" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Hillary Clinton</a> on their website. The photo depicted two men helping Clinton go up the stairs during her campaign in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Carolina" title="South Carolina" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">South Carolina</a> on February 27, 2016. Afterwards, several <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter" title="Twitter" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Twitter</a> accounts in support of Republican nominee <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump" title="Donald Trump" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Donald Trump</a> used the photo on the site, especially with the hashtag #HillaryHealth, which was used prior to the incident.<sup id="cite_ref-History_110-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-History-110" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[110]</a></sup> The use of the photo was criticized by several commentators for taking a relatively old photograph out of context as well as misleading their readers.<sup id="cite_ref-111" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-111" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[111]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-Hillary_Health_112-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-Hillary_Health-112" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[112]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On October 3, 2016, Drudge Report published an unfounded claim that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton" title="Bill Clinton" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Bill Clinton</a> had an illegitimate child named Danney Williams, an allegation that Drudge Report itself had reported as debunked in 1999 based on a <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time(magazine)" title="Time (magazine)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Time</a></i> magazine article.<sup id="cite_ref-113" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-113" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[113]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On December 30, 2016, Drudge Report accused the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_government" class="mw-redirect" title="United States federal government" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">United States federal government</a> of attempting to shut down its website with a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack" title="Denial-of-service attack" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">denial-of-service attack</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-btusgovattacksdrudge_114-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-btusgovattacksdrudge-114" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[114]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-sacbeesuggests_115-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-sacbeesuggests-115" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[115]</a></sup> Beginning roughly one week earlier, DDoS attacks had repeatedly taken the site offline for extended periods. Cybersecurity analysts speculated that the attack was on the scale of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Dyn_cyberattack" class="mw-redirect" title="2016 Dyn cyberattack" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2016 Dyn cyberattack</a> and suggested that only a small number of groups would have the ability to take down a highly-trafficked site for extended lengths of time.<sup id="cite_ref-116" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-116" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[116]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Drudge Report promoted the debunked <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory" title="Pizzagate conspiracy theory" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Pizzagate conspiracy theory</a>,<sup id="cite_ref-117" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-117" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[117]</a></sup> as well as conspiracy theories about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich" title="Murder of Seth Rich" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">murder of Seth Rich</a>.</span><sup id="cite_ref-118" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-118" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[118]</a></sup></font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Conspiracy_theories_about_the_2017_Las_Vegas_shooting">Conspiracy theories about the 2017 Las Vegas shooting</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In October 2017, Drudge Report promoted </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">conspiracy theories a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">bout the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting" title="2017 Las Vegas shooting" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">2017 Las Vegas shooting</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-119" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-119" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[119]</a></sup></font></p><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Immigration">Immigration</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[CORRECTIONS?]</span></span></font></h3><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In October 2017, the Drudge Report shared a false Breitbart News story claiming that an undocumented immigrant caused the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2017_Northern_California_wildfires" title="October 2017 Northern California wildfires" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">October 2017 Northern California wildfires</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-:0_120-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-:0-120" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[120]</a></sup> The story was rebutted by the Sonoma County's sheriff department which stated, "This is completely false, bad, wrong information that Breitbart started and is being put out into the public."<sup id="cite_ref-:0_120-1" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-:0-120" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[120]</a></sup></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In June 2018, the Drudge Report used a misleading headline and photo pairing to suggest that migrant children who had been separated from their parents by the Trump administration were violent criminals. The photo was of a group of Syrian children holding toy guns.</span><sup id="cite_ref-121" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-121" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[121]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-122" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-122" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[122]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-123" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#cite_note-123" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[123]</a></sup></font></p><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="mw-headline" id="References"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">References</font></span></h2></div><div><span class="mw-headline"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></span></div><div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">omg</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/i-knew-brett-kavanaugh-during-his-years-republican-operative-don-ncna907391" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/i-knew-brett-kavanaugh-during-his-years-republican-operative-don-ncna907391</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no lnx</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>I knew Brett Kavanaugh during his years as a Republican operative. Don't let him sit on the Supreme Court.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>We were part of a close circle of cynical hard-right operatives being groomed for much bigger things.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sept. 7, 2018, </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By David Brock</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I used to know Brett Kavanaugh pretty well. And, when I think of Brett now, in the midst of his hearings for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, all I can think of is the old "Aesop's Fables" adage: "A man is known by the company he keeps."</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And that's why I want to tell any senator who cares about our democracy: Vote no.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Twenty years ago, when I was a conservative movement stalwart, I got to know Brett Kavanaugh both professionally and personally.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Brett Kavanaugh proves the Supreme Court swing vote is dead</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">SEPT. 4, 2018]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Brett actually makes a cameo appearance in my memoir of my time in the GOP, "Blinded By The Right." I describe him at a party full of zealous young conservatives gathered to watch President Bill Clinton's 1998 State of the Union address — just weeks after the story of his affair with a White House intern had broken. <b>When the TV camera panned to Hillary Clinton, I saw Brett — at the time a key lieutenant of Ken Starr, the independent counsel investigating various Clinton scandals — mouth the word "bitch."</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But there's a lot more to know about Kavanaugh than just his Pavlovian response to Hillary's image. Brett and I were part of a close circle of cold, cynical and ambitious hard-right operatives being groomed by GOP elders for much bigger roles in politics, government and media. And it’s those controversial associations that should give members of the Senate and the American public serious pause.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[Related OPINION</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GOP's maneuvering during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings will seriously damage the Supreme Court's legitimacy]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Call it Kavanaugh's cabal: There was his </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">colleague on the Starr investigation, Alex Azar, now the Secretary of Health and Human Services</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">. Mark Paoletta is now chief counsel to Vice President Mike Pence;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> House anti-Clinton gumshoe</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Barbara Comstock </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">is now a Republican member of Congress</span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Future Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson were there with Ann Coulter, now a best-selling author, and</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"> internet provocateur Matt Drudge.</span></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At one time or another, each of them partied at my Georgetown townhouse amid much booze and a thick air of cigar smoke.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In a rough division of labor, Kavanaugh played the role of lawyer — one of the sharp young minds recruited by the Federalist Society to infiltrate the federal judiciary with true believers. Through that network, <b>Kavanaugh was mentored by D.C. Appeals Court Judge Laurence Silberman, known among his colleagues for planting leaks in the press for partisan advantage.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[Related OPINION</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tom Steyer and Ron Fein: Stop Kavanaugh's confirmation until Mueller's investigation is done]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">When, as I came to know, <b>Kavanaugh took on the role of designated leaker to the press of sensitive information from Starr's operation</b>, we all laughed that Larry had taught him well.</span> (Of course, that sort of political opportunism by a prosecutor is at best unethical, if not illegal.)</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Another compatriot was George Conway (now Kellyanne's husband), who led a secretive group of right-wing lawyers — we called them "the elves"</b> — who worked behind the scenes directing the litigation team of Paula Jones, who had sued Clinton for sexual harassment. I knew then that information was flowing quietly from the Jones team via Conway to Starr's office — and also that Conway's go-to man was none other than Brett Kavanaugh.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[Recommended OPINION</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What could be Florida Gov. DeSantis’ undoing on the national stage? HBCUs.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">OPINION</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump's election plot was eye-opening. And the Senate is finally paying attention.]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">That critical flow of inside information <b>allowed Starr, in effect, to set a perjury trap for Clinton, laying the foundation for a crazed national political crisis and an unjust impeachment over a consensual affair.</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">But the cabal's godfather was Ted Olson, the then-future solicitor general for George W. Bush and now a sainted figure of the GOP establishment </b>(and of some liberals for his role in legalizing same-sex marriage). <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Olson had a largely hidden role as a consigliere to the "Arkansas Project" — a multi-million dollar dirt-digging operation on the Clintons, funded by the eccentric right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife and run through The American Spectator magazine, where I worked at the time.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Both Ted and Brett had what one could only be called an unhealthy obsession with the Clintons — especially Hillary</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> While Ted was pushing through the Arkansas Project conspiracy theories claiming that Clinton White House lawyer and Hillary friend Vincent Foster was murdered (he committed suicide), Brett was costing taxpayers millions by pedaling the same garbage at Starr's office.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A detailed analysis of Kavanaugh's own notes from the Starr Investigation reveals he was cherry-picking random bits of information from the Starr investigation — as well as the multiple previous investigations — attempting vainly to legitimize wild right-wing conspiracies. For years he chased down each one of them without regard to the emotional cost to Foster’s family and friends, or even common decency.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[Related OPINION</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination is the result of years of unopposed conservative organizing]</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Kavanaugh was not a dispassionate finder of fact but rather an engineer of a political smear campaign. And after decades of that, he expects people to believe he's changed his stripes.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Like millions of Americans this week, I tuned into Kavanaugh's hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee with great interest. In his opening statement and subsequent testimony, </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Kavanaugh presented himself as a "neutral and impartial arbiter" of the law. Judges, he said, were not players but akin to umpires — objectively calling balls and strikes</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">. </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Again and again, he stressed his "independence" from partisan political influences.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But I don't need to see any documents to tell you who Kavanaugh is — because I've known him for years. And I'll leave it to all the lawyers to parse Kavanaugh's views on everything from privacy rights to gun rights. But I can promise you that any pretense of simply being a fair arbiter of the constitutionality of any policy regardless of politics is simply a pretense. He made up his mind nearly a generation ago — and, if he's confirmed, he'll have nearly two generations to impose it upon the rest of us.</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/matt-drudge-fires-back-with-brutal-fact-check-after-trump-mocks-conservative-website/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/matt-drudge-fires-back-with-brutal-fact-check-after-trump-mocks-conservative-website/</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trump-furious-with-matt-drudge-for-turning-against-him-as-impeachment-looms-report"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trump-furious-with-matt-drudge-for-turning-against-him-as-impeachment-looms-report</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Trump furious with Matt Drudge for turning against him as impeachment looms: report</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conservative Matt Drudge</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story<b> November 23, 2019</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to a report at the Daily Beast, Donald Trump is privately fuming that the Drudge Report has been highlighting stories about his legal problems and administration missteps at a time when he desperately needs support from the highly influential conservative website.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The report notes that the president is an avid follower of Matt Drudge’s longtime news aggregation site and has become increasingly frustrated that he is not seeing links to stories praising him — and has tasked son-in-law Jared Kushner to approach the publisher and fix it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As House lawmakers move quickly toward a likely impeachment vote before the year’s end, President Donald Trump has kept a close eye on his conservative media allies—and hasn’t been shy about trashing them for projecting insufficient fealty,” the Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng writes. “But it’s been one media outlet in particular that has <b>caught the president’s ire, even though it has so far been spared his Twitter rage: the Drudge Report. Publicly, Trump hasn’t said a peep about the highly popular news aggregator run by right-wing media impresario </b>Matt Drudge. But privately, he has simmered over the critical coverage that the site has run and linked to, with regards to the impeachment proceedings.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to his reporting, Trump has been dismayed with the headlines on the Drudge Report and has privately expressed, “What’s going on with Drudge?” with two other sources saying the president has complained to other staffers, wondering why the site is “so anti-Trump” lately.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an attempt to fix the fracture the Drudge Report, which has long been a go-to for conservatives due to its right-wing outlook, the president has asked Kushner to step in.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“In recent weeks, Trump has even asked Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and a top White House official—who has had a friendly relationship with the site’s creator—to ‘look into it’ and reach out to Drudge, the sources said,” the report states. “It is unclear if Kushner has done so. The White House and Drudge did not respond to requests for comment on this story as of press time.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Due to its huge audience, the site wields massive influence not just in conservative media, but in driving media narratives and political conversation among legacy newspapers and mainstream media publications as well,” Suebsaeng writes. “Trump’s private fretting over ‘what’s going on’ at the Drudge Report isn’t an isolated concern. Numerous others in the president’s orbit—re-election campaign, West Wing, media circles, long-time friends and associates—have noticed the site’s drift, as well. Some have expressed their anxieties about it directly to the president.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report goes on to note that Trump has held his fire when it comes to attacking Drudge, with Suebsaeng writing, “The fact that the president himself hasn’t yet taken to Twitter to bash Drudge in recent weeks may also have something to do with his general assessment of— and, at times, begrudging respect for—how Drudge operates, according to people who’ve spoken to Trump about the website and its famously reclusive creator.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You can read more here.</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"trolls, conspir.." seattle alt</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE WEB OF CONSPIRACY</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">History has a pattern.</font></span></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>An advancement in communications technology hands liars the means to lie louder and spread those lies further. </b>Look at the 1830s, when the invention of the <b>steam printing press and other paper-making technologies produced the rise of the “penny press.</b>” Newspapers became cheaper, more independent, more widespread, more competitive, and eager publishers found the power of the 19th-century version of clickbait. The New York-based Sun put out a series of entirely fictional stories that purported that “man-bats” and other exotic creatures were scurrying around on the moon.</font></span></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Soviet-born British TV producer Peter Pomerantsev, author of This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality</b>, argues that when tech rips open the floodgates of communication, the bad guys always find a way to exploit it. Dictators quickly harnessed the power of radio. Joseph McCarthy, as a U.S. senator in the ’50s, used television to spread his anti-Communist conspiracy theories.</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Yet for decades, the internet was heralded as a new frontier that allowed “citizen journalists” to take on the stodgy media elite. </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 1998, the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> <b style="">Drudge Report,</b> a right-wing news-aggregating website, <b style="">broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal when Newsweek got cold feet</b>.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> In 2004, when <b>Dan Rather</b> and 60 Minutes put out a 1973 memo purporting to show that President George W. Bush had received special treatment while in the Texas Air National Guard, <b>Drudge elevated the conservative bloggers</b> who persuasively argued the memo was a fake written in Microsoft Word.</span></font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An “Army of Davids” — as some bloggers dubbed themselves — swarmed to debunk flawed media accounts, trying to counter bias wherever they saw it. The gatekeepers were being overthrown, the drawbridge had been flung open and the villagers could storm the castle.</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But the villagers had their own standards for newsworthiness. Drudge also sent his readers to darker corners,</b> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">where sketchy websites claimed Barack Obama wasn’t an American citizen and Bill Clinton had a secret love child.<b> Drudge even provided fuel for “Pizzagate</b>,” the conspiracy that drove a man in 2016 to fire an AR-15 inside a pizzeria, because the internet told him that they were harboring child sex slaves.</span></font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conspiracy theorists used to spread their gospel through books, newsletters, public access television shows, and by standing on street corners and handing out fliers. But the web gave every community a niche — no matter how fringe — and allowed them to spread their message in only a few keystrokes. On the internet, the corkboard is infinite and the spool of yarn used to connect pictures of shadowy figures never runs out.</font></span></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></b></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The internet, Warzel says, handed fringe figures like <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Alex Jones of InfoWars a powerful new megaphone.</span></font></b></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He was one of the early pioneers of internet radio and video,” Warzel says. “It was a way to get around the notion that it was hard to sell advertising around some of his kooky ideas.”</font></span></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An audience of millions repeatedly tuned into <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Jones’ red-faced rants about 9/11 being an inside job, Obama chemtrails turning <b>frogs gay, </b>and the Sandy Hook shootings being faked. Drudge repeatedly linked to him.</span></font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social media sites only accelerated the spread of misinformation. It’s easier than ever for a single comment, particular an untrue one, to go viral. In ancient times, the opinions of quacks were largely quarantined to a newspaper’s page of letters to the editor.</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman</b> and racist Twitter randos with names like “@WhiteGenocideTM” are all simmering in the same stew together. Both, after all, get retweeted by the president.</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/media-reporter-reveals-trump-is-losing-one-of-his-key-right-wing-allies/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/media-reporter-reveals-trump-is-losing-one-of-his-key-right-wing-allies/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Media reporter reveals Trump is losing one of his key right-wing allies</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Cody Fenwick<b> October 9, 2019</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CNN’s Oliver Darcy has zeroed in on a key weakness in President Donald Trump’s support as the Ukraine scandal swells: the Drudge Report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For those who aren’t Republicans or right wingers, it’s easy to underestimate the reach of Matt Drudge’s link aggregation platform. It looks remarkably low-tech and displays graphic design that was simplistic even by the standards of the 1990s. But it remains a powerful force in conservative media, sometimes surpassing the New York Times for web traffic. Getting your story linked on Drudge is like having the reader flood gates opened.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So conservative pay attention to how Drudge is leaning, and they’re influenced by the stories he links to. And since, as Darcy reported, Drudge has been linking to more stories revealing negative information about Trump, the president should be worried.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Darcy reported:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“He’s reacting to changing circumstances,” a person close to the media mogul, who said Drudge had grown exasperated with Trump, told CNN Business.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>…</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“He’s one of the dominoes that would have to fall for the right-wing media to allow Trump to be removed from office,</b>” said John Ziegler, a conservative who was an occasional guest host on Drudge’s old radio show and writes columns on media for Mediaite.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Drudge turning on Trump can create a negative feedback loop for the president. Conservatives read Drudge, consume negative information about Trump, and Trump’s prospects get worse. At the same time, conservative writers hoping to get linked to by Drudge frame their stories about the president in a more negative light, thus ramping up the bad news for Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, Trump has other bulwarks in national conservative media. As long as Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson are all on his side — and they all still are — Trump’s support in the Republican base is likely to stay strong enough to keep him around.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But if, as Ziegler said, the dominoes were going to start to fall against Trump, Drudge would be a crucial ally to lose. It should put Trump and his defenders on edge that the link aggregated is growing discontent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch a clip of Darcy discussing the matter below:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oliver Darcy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@oliverdarcy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For years, it's been fairly safe to say: As goes @DRUDGE, so goes the conservative media. Now Drudge has soured on Trump. Will others follow his lead? Spoke about this with @BrookeBCNN. Story here: http://cnn.it/2AZkz8Q </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Embedded video</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">milloy bs smoked out:</font></div><div><p style="margin-top: 0.07in; margin-bottom: 0.07in"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The report also

had another upside  this EPA

PM<sub>2.5</sub> human experimentation scandal finally made a media

breakthrough. Though the issue had previously been covered by some

conservative media and also on an ongoing basis by an NBC-TV

affiliate in North Carolina, on April 2, 2014 it made the<b> very top of

the Drudge Report with the headline:</b></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b>SHOCK REPORT: EPA tested deadly pollutants on human beings.</b></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The

next day the Drudge Report added the headline:</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Experiments

on children?</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The

EPA inspector general’s ploy to discourage media reporting of the

controversy had failed. The Associated Press ran the headline, “EPA

Fails to Disclose Risks in Human Tests.”<a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote1anc" href="#sdendnote1sym"><sup>i</sup></a>

The <i>New

York Times</i>

headline was “E.P.A. Faulted for Failure to Report Risks.”<a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote2anc" href="#sdendnote2sym"><sup>ii</sup></a>

The <i>Washington

Post</i>

followed with “EPA did not disclose cancer risks in tests.”<a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote3anc" href="#sdendnote3sym"><sup>iii</sup></a></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The good news was that the EPA human

experiments story had achieved a level of national prominence that

EPA had sought to avoid. The bad news was that no one was getting to

the real issue  whether, in

fact, PM<sub>2.5</sub> was as deadly as EPA claimed and whether the

agency had justified its PM<sub>2.5</sub> regulations on the basis of

blatant falsehoods</font></p>

Associated Press, EPA Fails to Disclose Risks in Human Tests, April

2, 2014.</font></p>

</div>

New York Times, E.P.A. Faulted for Failure to Report Risks, April 3,

2014.</font></p>

</div>

</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><sup> </sup> Washington Post, EPA did

not disclose cancer risks in tests, April 2, 2014.</font></p>

</div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Former Fox News reporter delivers brutal fact-check to network’s ‘right-wing hosts’ and ‘partisan misinformation’</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">written by News Corpse, Daily Kos<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>June 25, 2019</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Viewers of Fox News will remember a frequent face on the network during many of the elections for the past couple of decades. He was such a ubiquitous presence he was referred to endearingly as Campaign Carl. However, Carl Cameron retired from Fox News after twenty-two years a couple of years ago. And if anyone is wondering what happened to him since, well, you might be surprised.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Cameron just announced his participation in a <b>new Internet news aggregation site called Front Page Live. He formed it with David Romm of ThinkProgress to be “an antidote to the Drudge Report.</b>” The founders plan to provide a platform for progressive news along with opportunities to take action on causes like climate change and liberal politics. And unlike</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> Drudge,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> their focus will be on accurate news stories, rather than flagrantly slanted propaganda of shills like Breitbart and Infowars and … Fox News.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Cameron released a video (see below) explaining his new venture, and he didn’t mince words about his former employer and colleagues at Fox:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“What’s a former Fox guy doing here on Front Page Live partnering with progressives? Well, it’s about facts, not partisanship. The idea of fair and balanced news appealed to me.<b> But over the years, the right-wing hosts drowned out straight journalism with partisan misinformation.”</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Indeed, the State TV hucksters at Fox News (Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, and more) have submerged the network with a deluge of falsehoods</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. Note that Cameron didn’t merely criticize partisan information, but explicitly called it what it is: Misinformation. He could have gone even further to label it disinformation and would still have been correct. He continued with some biting commentary on Donald Trump saying that:</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“I have a unique insight and understanding of how the right operates and literally 30 years of covering Donald Trump. Trump’s a conman. He DID collude, and coordinated with Russia to get elected. He encouraged them to intervene in the 2016 election on live television. We all saw it. And recently he said he’d accept their help again because he sees nothing wrong with it. And yes, he is still helping Russia by refusing to take strong actions again a future cyber attack.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This is a remarkable transformation. Cameron says that he kept his political views to himself while at Fox News because he was interested in being a journalist. Had Fox known that they would have fired him. It will be interesting to see if the new website is able to generate the kind of viral news dissemination that Drudge has managed for the conservative media. At least it’s satisfying to see that someone was able to shed the mantle of the wingnut cult and renounce the professional liars at Fox. There may be hope after all.</div></div><div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> =</font></p></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">new 519</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/drudge-report-slams-trump-for-faking-his-build-the-wall-effort/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/drudge-report-slams-trump-for-faking-his-build-the-wall-effort/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump knows that in order to be reelected in 2020, he will need to fire up his base as much as possible — and one of the ways to do that is promoting his proposed U.S./Mexico border wall, which theoretically, would stretch all the way from the Pacific Ocean to East Texas. But the <b>right-wing Drudge Report is reporting that there has been a “wall stall,” with less than two miles having been built so far.</b></font></p><div class="p1_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Twitter, political reporter Dave Levinthal is drawing attention to the Drudge Report’s “Wall Stall” headline. Levinthal, responding to a May 22 tweet in which Trump claims that a “new wall”—not merely a “renovation”—is being built, points to Drudge’s headline and asserts that “President Trump isn’t going to like this.”</font></p><div class="p2_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Any type of negative publicity on the Drudge Report is bad news for Trump, as the Drudge Report is one of the most high-traffic websites in the right-wing media.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">AN on Hannity picks up hillary sick story</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style=""><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kurt Eichenwald</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@kurteichenwald</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2...is<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> August 2, 2016, when Corsi sent an email to Stone. In that email, <b>Corsi </b>says that Assange is planning a document dump on October 2 to cause the most damage possible. (Do you Wikileaks fans FINALLY understand what this fraud is?) I</span>n preparation of that, Corsi says that....</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style=""><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">..'That appears to be the game hackers are now about.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke – neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus..." We do not need any further evidence of collusion - THIS is it. These bastards are....</span></font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Kurt Eichenwald</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">?</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">@kurteichenwald</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">4..</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">.willing to undermine democracy with lies. <b style="">Drudge </b>picks it up in a few days</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Then, EIGHT days after this conspiracy involving Corsi, Stone, Russian hackers, Assange, frigging @</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">seanhannity jumps into the mix</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. Hillary makes a goofy head movement when someone shoves a mike in....</span></font></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">punked, any consequence? apology? correction?</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/drudge-falls-for-fake-racist-pro-trump-stunt" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.thedailybeast.com/drudge-falls-for-fake-racist-pro-trump-stunt</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On  <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"> </span><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">Monday, YouTube “star” Joey Salads claimed he had damning evidence that the “black community is very violent toward [</span><a class="TrackingLink LinkWrapper" href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/19/your-handy-guide-to-translating-trump-in-the-debate.html" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Republican presidential nominee] Donald Trump</a><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"> </span><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">and his supporters.”</span></span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + (((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2));"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">By Tuesday, YouTube “star” Joey Salads, a 22-year-old whose real name is Joseph Saladino, was asking for forgiveness for staging anti-Trump violence in a “black neighborhood.”</font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + (((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2));"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On October 17, Salads accrued more than a million views on his most newsworthy “social experiment” yet: “Trump Car DESTROYED in Black Neighborhood (Social Experiment).”</font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + (((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2));"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the video, he explains how his “social experiment” will show how black people behave violently toward Donald Trump.</font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + (((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2));"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You may have seen on the internet and through the polls that a lot of black people don’t like Trump,” he says in the video. “And they don’t even like his supporters in some cases. So what I did was, I got a car, put some Trump apparel on it, and we’re gonna park it in a black neighborhood and see what happens."</font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + (((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2));"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[vid]</font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + (((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2));"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the intro, 30 minutes pass, according to the video. Then, captured by what appears to be hidden-camera footage, a black man with his face blurred walks up to the car. He calls up friends, and within 15 minutes the man is joined by four other black men.</font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + (((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2));"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After opening the doors and trunk of the inexplicably unlocked car, the group spends about 30 seconds attacking the car with a metal pipe and a rock, smashing the car’s windows while ripping off some of the Trump signs attached to the car. Then, as quickly as they arrived, they run away.</font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + (((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2));"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“As you can see from this video, the black community is very violent toward Trump and his supporters,” Salads says earnestly at the end of the video.</b></font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + (((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2));"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Within hours of its posting to Salads’ more than 1.4 million YouTube subscribers, the video went viral, racking up more than a million views. It was even featured at the top of The Drudge Report.</font></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 31px; padding: 0px calc(32px + (((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2));"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The only problem? The entire video was staged...</font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">AN 119</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Donald Trump was running for president in 2015 and 2016, Matt Drudge’s the Drudge Report—one of the most high-traffic right-wing websites—was full of pro-Trump headlines. But if a banner that appeared on the Drudge Report on January 17 is any indication, there could be trouble in paradise. That banner reads, “Did Trump bribe Drudge poll?,” implying that a Drudge Report poll was <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/drudge-report-banner-blares-did-trump-bribe-drudge-poll" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">rigged to be favorable</span></a> to President Trump.</font></span></p><div class="p0_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The banner links to a January 17 </span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Wall Street Journal </i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">article on poll rigging in Trump’s favor.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> The article alleges that in early 2015, Trump supporter John Gauger—owner of the company RedFinch Solutions and chief information officer at Liberty University—was paid around $12,000-$13,000 dollars to help Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/poll-rigging-for-trump-and-creating-womenforcohen-one-it-firms-work-order-11547722801" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">rig online polls</span></a> on Trump’s behalf.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Responding to the article, Cohen visited Twitter and posted, “As for the @WSJ article on poll rigging, what I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of @realDonaldTrump @POTUS. I truly regret my </span><a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelCohen212/status/1085900900835778560?ref_src=twsrc%255Etfw%257Ctwcamp%255Etweetembed%257Ctwterm%255E1085900900835778560&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.washingtonexaminer.com%252Fnews%252Fmichael-cohen-hired-company-to-rig-polls-in-favor-of-trump" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">blind loyalty</span></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> to a man who doesn’t deserve it.”</span></font></span></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The polls included a 2014 CNBC poll on business leaders and a </span><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">2015 Drudge Report poll</span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">of possible GOP presidential candidates.</span></font></p><div class="p2_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to political journalist Jared Yates Sexton (author of the forthcoming book “The Man They Wanted Me to Be”), the fact that the Drudge Report has posted that banner and linked to an article unfavorable to Trump suggests that Matt Drudge’s support for the president could be waning. On Twitter, Sexton posted, “A quietly important development: if Drudge turns on Trump because he rigged a Drudge Report poll, it could mean a massive hemorrhage of Trump’s base. And I wouldn’t put that past Drudge for a second.”</font></span></p><div class="p3_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In a separate tweet, Yates explained why Trump dare not offend far-right media personalities like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. Yates posted, “It might seem small, but the Right Wing bubble is very fragile. That’s why Trump is so concerned about Coulter and Hannity. A momentary blip or break can result in giant echo chamber disruptions.”</b></font></span></p><div class="p4_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The January 17 banner isn’t the first time there has been talk of Drudge possibly losing faith in Trump. In July 2017, CNN published an article noting that the Drudge Report had “</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">covered the White House with a <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2017/07/26/media/matt-drudge-donald-trump-coverage/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">more critical eye</span></a>” than it had previously and asserting that Matt Drudge “has appeared irked by Trump and his White House, frustrated with the president’s inability to carry out the ambitious agenda he campaigned on. And he’s not being shy about it.”</span></font></span></p><div class="p5_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>That CNN article noted that Matt Drudge enjoyed a friendly relationship with the Trump family. An anonymous Trump Administration official told CNN that Matt Drudge had “met with President Donald Trump, spent time with Ivanka Trump and doled out advice to Jared Kushner.</b>” But that was in 2017, and a lot has happened since then—including the 2018 midterms and Democrats achieving a 40-seat majority in the House of Representatives.</font></span></p><div class="p6_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite his reputation for being a recluse at times, the 52-year-old Matt Drudge is one of Gen-X’s most famous right-wing Internet media figures. He launched the Drudge Report as a subscription-based e-mail newsletter in 1995 and later turned it into a high-traffic website with millions of readers.</font></span></p></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div style=""><h2 class="no-coverage frontpage_dedup" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/conservative-matt-drudge-rips-fox-news-host-laughing-about-terror-after-synagogue-massacre-check" style="text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 10px 0px; line-height: 20px; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: right;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"> Matt Drudge Rips Fox News Host for Laughing About Terror After Synagogue Massacre: ‘Check Your Soul!'</font></a></h2></div><div style=""><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref1</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://YYY.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2016/dec/06/more-terrifying-than-trump-the-booming-conspiracy-culture-of-climate-science-denial</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For years now geologists have been politely but forcefully arguing over the existence or otherwise of a new epoch – one that might have started decades ago.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>Some of the world’s most respected geologists and scientists reckon humans have had such a profound impact on the Earth that we’ve now moved out of the Holocene and into the Anthropocene.</div><div>
</div><div>It’s not official. But it’s close.</div><div>
</div><div>Dropping nuclear bombs and burning billions of tonnes of fossil fuels will do that to a planet, as will clearing swaths of forests to make way for food production and supermarket car parks and the like.</div><div>
</div><div>The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age</div><div> Read more</div><div>
</div><div>That’s all in the real world though, and sometimes you might get the horrible, chilling idea that when it comes to the production of our thoughts and ideas, that’s not the place a lot of us live anymore.</div><div>
</div><div>So I’d like to also propose the idea of an <b>impending new epoch – the Trumpocene – that in the spirit of the era itself is based solely on a few thoughts held loosely together with hyperlinks and a general feeling of malaise.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the Trumpocene, the epoch-defining impacts of climate change are nothing more than a conspiracy. Even if these impacts are real, then they’re probably good for us.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The era is named, of course, for the phenomenon that is Donald Trump, the Republican pick for US president whose candidacy has been defined by a loose grasp of facts, jingoistic posturing, populist rhetoric, his amazing hair and his treatment of women.</div><div>
</div><div>So what are the things that might define the Trumpocene?</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Is it the point at which large numbers of <b>people started to reject the views of large groups of actual experts</b> – people with university qualifications and things – in exchange for the views of anyone who agrees with them? (Brexit, anyone?)</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">How about that point when a critical mass of people have become convinced that they can Google their way out of the laws of physics?</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Let’s go and dig for evidence of the Trumpocene.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A few months ago, Trump gave an interview to polemicist and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who could be the angriest person on the internet.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Jones has a regular online radio and TV show called Infowars that has expanded beyond being a vehicle for Jones’s cult personality to include regular news bulletins and a line in <b>“alternative” health therapies.</b></span></div><div>
</div><div>Las Vegas shooting was 'false flag' operation, InfoWars founder claims</div><div> Read more</div><div><b>Jones thinks that climate change is a scam being forced on us by the United Nations, which, in turn, is a totalitarian regime and kingpin of a new world order.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The a fervent Trump supporter has told his viewers that the both US president, Barack Obama, and the Democrat nominee, Hilary Clinton, were “literal demons” who smelt of sulphur. I kid you not.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In Australia, we have a senator who similarly sees climate change as a thing made up by the UN. Our top-rating radio host, Alan Jones (no relation), has said climate science is “witchcraft”.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Now, before I go on, there’s a prevailing view (often expressed in the comments of this blog) that climate science deniers and oddballs like Alex Jones should be ignored. In some ways, those commenters are right.</div><div>
</div><div>But then you look at the popularity of people like Jones and see that, to increasing numbers of people, they are not people to be ignored, but are paragons of fearless truth-telling.</div><div>
</div><div>There’s a demographic to which rhetoric from people like Jones and, more broadly, Trump, appeals.</div><div>
</div><div>Jones’s YouTube account has about 1.6 million subscribers and is growing. He has 1.2m likes on his Facebook account. His website, according to SimilarWeb, was getting 27m pageviews a month back in February. Now it’s at 36m.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Earlier this year Jones snagged a rare interview with the conservative blogger Matt Drudge. Jones and Drudge expressed mutual admiration.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Drudge’s news and opinion aggregator website, the Drudge Report, is a genuine web phenomenon and considered hugely influential.</div><div>
</div><div>With about 1.37bn page views a month, the Drudge Report is the second-ranked media site in the United States — 600m views behind msn.com but 300m ahead of Google’s news page.</div><div>
</div><div>The Drudge Report also tends to link to news items that disparage any action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There’s now a whole media ecosystem that climate science denialism can exist inside, where there’s little scrutiny of the views of deniers. US-based sites like the Drudge Report, Infowars, Breitbart and Daily Caller are part of that ecosystem.</span></div><div>
</div><div>As the Guardian’s Roy Greenslade notes,<b> Breitbart “has the dubious honour of challenging Fox News’s status as America’s most influential conservative media outlet”.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Not only is the outlet having influence, but its executive chairman, Stephen Bannon, is running Trump’s campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>Breitbart too is growing its audience, according to those SimilarWeb statistics. In February 2016 the site registered 89m page views. In August, it was up to 143m.</div><div>
</div><div>Conspiracy central: the activists painting Clinton as a sick, terrorist-friendly killer</div><div> Read more</div><div><b>Another characteristic of the Trumpocene might be the heightened levels of hubris combined with triumphant rhetoric and the tendency towards insults.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Breitbart writer James Delingpole, for example, rejects the evidence of human-caused climate change. Last week he described a Royal Society fellow and climate scientist as a “puffed-up missy”.</span></div><div>
</div><div>“What a bunch of disgraceful, money-grubbing, charlatans the climate alarmists are,” wrote Delingpole, before then trying to link “climate alarmists” with child abusers.</div><div>
</div><div>For a while, maybe the Trumpocene and the Anthropocene can coexist.</div><div>
</div><div>But even though they exist on separate plains, can we really afford to dismiss the impact of either of them?</div></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref2</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://YYY.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2016/dec/06/more-terrifying-than-trump-the-booming-conspiracy-culture-of-climate-science-denial</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div><b>more terrifying than Trump? The booming conspiracy culture of climate science denial</b></div><div>Graham Readfearn</div><div>Conspiracy websites and hyperpartisan media outlets are building huge online audiences who want to hear climate change is a hoax</div><div>
</div><div> @readfearn</div><div>Tue 6 <b>Dec 2016</b> 01.52 EST Last modified on Wed 14 Feb 2018 12.08 </div><div>
</div><div> The US president-elect, Donald Trump, who has praised the conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars.com, Alex Jones. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images</div><div>Back in December 2015, Donald Trump gave a 30-minute live interview to the website Infowars.com and its combustible leader, Alex Jones.</div><div>
</div><div>“Your reputation is amazing and I will not let you down,” said Trump, who, at the time, was leading in most polls for the Republican presidential nomination.</div><div>
</div><div>Jones, a fervent Trump supporter, is a conspiracy theorist writ large. He insists there is “iron clad” evidence that the 11 September terrorist attacks in the US were an “inside job”.</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>How a dubious tweet about illegal votes found its way to Trump's megaphone</b></div><div> Read more</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Jones has also said that in 1996 governments deployed a worldwide program to secretly put chemicals into the fuel of aircraft to poison people. These “chemtrails” don’t hurt the “globalists” though, because Jones says they have a “special detox”.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Oh, and Jones also thinks climate change is a hoax.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Climate change is an issue he covers regularly on his shows, where he has interviewed climate science deniers such as Christopher Monckton (a familiar name to Australians given his multiple speaking tours here), Marc Morano and James Delingpole.</span></div><div>
</div><div>While it’s easy to dismiss the conspiracy culture pushed by Jones as pseudoscientific rubbish, it is not so easy to dismiss the size of the audience he has been building. Jones’s website gets 57m page views per month – double where it was six months ago.</div><div>
</div><div>According to analytics site Social Blade, the Alex Jones YouTube channel has 1.8m subscribers and just racked up its one billionth (that’s not a typo) video view. (For comparison, the BBC News YouTube channel has 992,000 subscribers.)</div><div>
</div><div>Jones’s Infowars site is part of an ecosystem of hyperpartisan media outlets that insist climate change is a hoax. Like Jones, that ecosystem is rapidly building a receptive online audience.</div><div>
</div><div>Those sites can now reach hundreds of millions of people with headlines insisting that human-caused climate change is a hoax, that global warming has stopped or that adding CO2 to the atmosphere is good.</div><div>
</div><div>One example. The most popular climate change story across social media in the past six months was not some diligently researched piece from one of the many very good science journalists writing for major news organisations around the world.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rather, the story claimed that thousands of scientists had come forward to declare that climate change was a hoax. The writer was a guy running a website in Los Angeles who worked for eight years for the UK conspiracy theorist David Icke.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Icke thinks the moon might be some sort of spaceship, that the world is controlled by a globalist illuminati and, yes, that climate change is a hoax. Icke is a regular guest on Infowars.</div><div>
</div><div>Infowars will often source material from Breitbart – the website that used to be run by Trump’s campaign chairman and soon-to-be chief strategist, Steve Bannon.</div><div>
</div><div>Many of Breitbart’s most popular climate change items are written by Delingpole, a British polemicist. Guess what he thinks of climate change?</div><div>
</div><div>Given that climate science denial has become a part of the Republican party’s identity, it was hardly surprising that the GOP-led House of Representatives committee on science should tweet a link to a Breitbart climate story written by Delingpole (a story based on a deeply misleading article in the UK’s Daily Mail).</div><div>
</div><div>Breitbart is also building its audience. According to data from SimilarWeb, the site now gets 168m page views per month, doubling its reach in the past six months.</div><div>
</div><div><b>The Drudge Report </b>–<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> the wildly popular conservative-leaning news aggregator site with 1.7bn page views a month – also helps drive traffic to sites such as Infowars and Breitbart. Its founder, Matt Drudge, was another recent guest of Jones.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Since Trump won the US election, there has been much talk of the influence of “fake news”, with Facebook in particular identified as a key conduit. That encompasses news that is blatantly fabricated but also lounge room content farms that pass themselves off as news. Then there are the hyperpartisan opinion sites.</div><div>
</div><div>I’m happy to admit the online growth and reach of climate science denialists and conspiracy theorists terrifies me. Why?</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>LeBron James will not stay at Trump-branded hotel in New York</div><div> Read more]</div><div>
</div><div><b>The problem is not that these sites exist but that not enough people seem to know the difference between actual news, fake news, partisan opinion and conspiratorial bullshit. One of those people is the president-elect of the United States.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Either that, or people don’t even care to differentiate between fake and real, especially if what they read taps into their own prejudices.</div><div>
</div><div>There is a concerted attempt to cut sensible climate policy off at the knees by building a popular online movement against the science itself.</div><div>
</div><div>For decades, the fossil fuel industry and so-called “free market” ideologues at conservative thinktanks have misled the public on the science and the risks of climate change.</div><div>
</div><div>Now, the decades of material produced by that climate science denial machinery is finding a new audience. Those talking points are being reheated and screamed, in FULL CAPS.</div><div>
</div><div>So what’s the answer? No one seems to know but much appears to be in the hands of Google and Facebook.</div><div>
</div><div>Other than that, a crash course in critical thinking and recognising climate science denial brought to you by the illuminati might be the order of the day.</div></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref3</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://YYY.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/feb/21/trumps-potential-science-adviser-william-happer-hanging-around-with-conspiracy-theorists</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</div><div><b>Trump's potential science adviser William Happer: hanging around with conspiracy theorists</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div>Graham Readfearn</div><div>The Princeton atomic physicist is no climate scientist – and he’s pushing the same old denier myths</div><div>
</div><div> @readfearn</div><div>Mon 20 <b>Feb 2017 </b>23.14 EST Last modified on Thu 5 Jul 2018 16.52 EDT</div><div> William Happer: who is Trump’s likely science adviser? – video report</div><div>
</div><div>William Happer is a physicist at Princeton University – one of those US academic institutions with brand recognition for academic excellence that travels the globe.</div><div>
</div><div>Happer is well known for his contrarian views (that’s the polite term) on human-caused climate change.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">So when it emerged last week that the professor might seriously be in the running to be President Donald Trump’s science adviser, that Princeton tag no doubt added an air of authority to his opinions.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In short, Happer thinks more CO2 will only be good for the planet – putting him at odds with science academies around the world.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump's likely science adviser calls climate scientists 'glassy-eyed cult'</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Read more</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“There’s a whole area of climate so-called science that is really more like a cult,” Happer told the Guardian. “It’s like Hare Krishna or something like that. They’re glassy-eyed and they chant. It will potentially harm the image of all science.”</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Happer has also compared the “demonisation” of carbon dioxide to the “demonisation of poor Jews under Hitler” – because a Nazi reference will always get you noticed.</span></div><div>
</div><div>But here’s the thing — the first of many to note about Happer. First, he is not, by any stretch, an expert on climate change science.</div><div>
</div><div>Happer’s record of getting scientific papers published in leading journals on climate change science is at, or very close to, zero. Simply, he knows a lot about some stuff, but he is not a climate scientist.</div><div>
</div><div>While he has a <b>distinguished career as an atomic physicist, previously serving the administration of George HW Bush as a science director, </b>the 77-year-old’s views on climate science are outnumbered by all the credible evidence, all the credible science agencies and are also being laughed at by the Earth’s thermometers and its melting ice sheets and glaciers.</div><div>
</div><div>Prof Michael Oppenheimer has scores of articles on climate science in leading journals going back to the mid-1990s. He’s a climate scientist … at Princeton.</div><div>
</div><div>So what does Oppenheimer think of his colleague?</div><div>
</div><div>“With respect to climate science and scientists,” Oppenheimer told me by email, <b>“[Happer] is not only unknowledgeable but appears to have become unmoored.”</b></div><div>
</div><div>Ouch. But then, maybe Oppenheimer has glassy eyes?</div><div>
</div><div>Happer has laid out his thoughts on climate change in some detail in an ongoing <b>Focused Civil Dialogue (my irony meter just exploded</b>) with the Australian climate scientist Prof David Karoly.</div><div>
</div><div>While Happer’s contribution seems technical, it’s the same parade of zombie talking points that actual climate scientists have been dealing with for years.</div><div>
</div><div>Happer says CO2 levels and temperatures have been much higher in the past and that life “flourished” under these conditions many millions of years ago.</div><div>
</div><div>He doesn’t mention that during those times sea levels were probably several metres – sometimes well over 10 metres – higher than they are today. If that’s the world you want to advocate, then it’s time to call the removal guys for most of the world’s major coastal cities.</div><div>
</div><div>The climate scientist Dr Nerilie Abram, of Australian National University, specialises in the climate of the ancient past. She told me:</div><div>
</div><div>Warm periods in Earth’s past tell us a lot about how our climate works and what we can expect if we don’t act to halt current climate change. The last time that temperatures were similar to now, this caused parts of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets to slowly melt and sea level globally ended up six to nine metres higher than now. If we go back 3 million years – the last time carbon dioxide levels were at today’s level – sea level was probably around 10 to 40 metres higher. Life on Earth might not be fazed by those numbers or even higher ones, but for human civilisations they would be catastrophic.</div><div>
</div><div>Happer also rolls out that mouldy old chestnut that CO2 is just food for plants, but ignores the research on the impacts that higher concentrations of CO2 will have on our global food supply.</div><div>
</div><div>Research into some staple crops such as rice, wheat and sorghum, for example, finds that they end up with less protein when CO2 is at higher concentrations. That’s before you worry about how food crops will cope with droughts and heatwaves.</div><div>
</div><div>At a conference in December Happer said his “main concern” was that climate change was “likely to damage public perceptions of science”.</div><div>
</div><div>If Happer is concerned about the reputation of science, then he’s picking some very odd places to hang around – that conference being one of them.</div><div>
</div><div>The Arizona gathering was organised by <b>Freedom Force International – a group led by the famed conspiracy theorist G Edward Griffin.</b> He fits right in with the booming culture of conspiracy that’s growing big audiences online.</div><div>
</div><div>Among many other things, Griffin has said there is “no such thing” as HIV and that human-caused climate change is a hoax.</div><div>
</div><div>Griffin also promotes conspiracies around “chemtrails”. Just punch that word into your favourite search engine for hours of family fun (don’t actually do that).</div><div>
</div><div>To summarise, there’s a plan to spray the atmosphere with chemicals added to planes to poison everyone and “they” are using weather modification as a weapon.</div><div>
</div><div>Griffin has said “somebody is spending a lot of money and effort to spray the planet” and that this is probably some international effort.</div><div>
</div><div>Also appearing at the conference was the British hereditary peer and climate science denier Lord Christopher Monckton, who likes to say he was appointed as a reviewer of the last big UN intergovernmental panel on climate change report without mentioning that, literally, you need no qualifications and can “appoint” yourself.</div><div>
</div><div>Happer’s speech to the conference isn’t yet online but an interview he gave at the venue after is.</div><div>
</div><div>Facebook Twitter Pinterest]</div><div>
</div><div>William Happer gives an interview on the sidelines of a<b> Freedom Force International conference in Arizona in December]</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div>He goes over the same ground. CO2 is really awesome and life would be much better if there was a lot more of it.</div><div>
</div><div>“I don’t think there are any cons to CO2 … we are really in a CO2 famine,” he says. “My main concern is that it’s likely to damage public perceptions of science. I am hoping that I and other scientists can persuade the public that we are not all for sale.”</div><div>
</div><div>I’m struggling to understand how someone concerned with the reputation of science would want to lend his name, and the name of Princeton University, to a conference organised by conspiracy theorists.</div><div>
</div><div>Greenpeace exposes sceptics hired to cast doubt on climate science</div><div> Read more</div><div>This is also the bit when we mention that Happer was caught in a sting by Greenpeace activists in 2015, when he offered to write a report on the benefits of carbon dioxide for a fake fossil fuel client while avoiding any need to disclose the funding’s source.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Happer asked that rather than pay him, the fake lobbyists should instead pay the CO2 Coalition – a climate science denial group based in the US. Tax documents list Happer as a director and president.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He has also given evidence in a court case on behalf of the coal company Peabody Energy where he similarly asked that his fee go to the CO2 Coalition. He laid these facts out in emails released by Greenpeace, stating that the coalition did not pay him any fees or salary.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Remembering Happer’s dislike of science being “for sale”, it’s noteworthy that his CO2 Coalition colleague Patrick Moore was paid last year by a major European coal lobby organisation to give a presentation in Strasbourg telling the audience we should “celebrate CO2”.</b></div><div>
</div><div>No doubt Happer would argue that money does not influence the views of people like Moore, though he does say that it influences actual climate scientists who get research grants from universities and governments. Go figure.</div><div>
</div><div>Whether or not Happer gets the gig as Trump’s science adviser remains to be seen. But given the climate science deniers and fossil fuel advocates who Trump has already employed, it seems Happer will fit right in.</div></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style=""><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">AN</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> news broke that Christine Blasey Ford—a 51-year-old professor of psychology at Palo Alto University in Northern California—had accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her at a party back in 1982, many of the responses were fair-minded and even-handed. A long list of people have stressed that while Kavanaugh hasn’t been convicted of anything, they definitely want to hear, in detail, all that Ford has to say—especially in light of the fact that Kavanaugh is up for a lifetime appointment on the highest judicial body in the United States.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But on the far right, some wingnuts have been quick to either demonize Ford or turn her accusation into a Republicans-versus-Democrats argument. Kavanaugh is their guy, the GOP is their party—and Ford’s accusation, they immediately assume, is nothing more than a Democratic conspiracy.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here are five of the most appalling reactions to Ford’s accusation that have come from the far right.</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 20px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1. Sen. Mitch McConnell Turns Ford’s Accusation into an Attack on Dianne Feinstein</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Senate majority leader, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell has been a ruthless, vindictive partisan whose top priority is sticking it to Democrats—not the wellbeing of the country. And he made that abundantly clear when, after learning that Ford had accused Kavanaugh of attempted rape, his <a href="https://splinternews.com/the-gops-dirty-war-against-brett-kavanaughs-accuser-has-1829118350" style="text-decoration-line: none;">knee-jerk response</a> was to attack Sen. Dianne Feinstein (the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee) rather than wanting to hear what Ford has to say. McConnell views Ford’s allegation in strictly partisan terms, faulting Feinstein for not coming forward with the information she had on Ford and Kavanaugh sooner. But Ford, at first, had requested anonymity. And McConnell, always a Republican first and an American second, fumed, “Now, now, at the 11th hour, with committee votes on schedule—after Democrats have spent weeks and weeks searching for any possible reason that the nomination should be delayed—now, now, they choose to reveal this allegation.”  </font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2. Donald Trump Jr. Mocks, Belittles Christine Blasey Ford</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">After Ford decided to reveal her identity, it didn’t take Donald Trump, Jr.—vice president of the Trump Organization—long to begin ridiculing and belittling her. In an Instagram post, the president’s 40-year-old son posted a mock “letter” that was <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/09/17/brett-kavanaugh-allegations-donald-trump-jr-mocks-sexual-assault-claim/1333520002/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">written in crayon</a> and labeled “Judge Kavanaugh’s sexual assault letter found by Dems.” The mock “letter” read, “Hi, Cindy, will you be my girlfriend? Love, Brett,” with boxes for checking either “yes” or “no.” And in a mocking tone, Trump, Jr. said of Kavanaugh, “Oh, boy, the Dems and their usual nonsense games really have him on the ropes now.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><strong style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">3. Matt Drudge,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Grabien News Attack Kavanaugh Accuser by Confusing Her With Someone Else</span></font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matt Drudge’s The Drudge Report attempted to smear Ford on Twitter by linking to a <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/drudge-report-christine-ford_us_5b9ff404e4b04d32ebfb2c91" style="text-decoration-line: none;">hit piece</a> on her that had originally been published by Grabien News. In the article, Grabien tried to paint Ford as a bad professor who had received a lot of <a href="https://news.grabien.com/story-somethings-wrong-her-christine-fords-students-savage-her-rev" style="text-decoration-line: none;">negative online reviews</a> from her students. One of the reviews, posted on RateMyProfessor.com on September 25, 2014, said, “Christine Ford is the worst educator I have experienced. Avoid taking her class and avoid any interaction with this person.” But the Christine Ford in that review is Christine A. Ford, a licensed social worker who taught at California State University, Fullerton—not Kavanaugh’s accuser Christine Blasey Ford, who is employed by Palo Alto University. In fact, Fullerton is in Orange County south of Los Angeles, and is well over 300 miles from Palo Alto. Grabien has since retracted the inaccurate story that the Drudge Report was so <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/drudge-report-christine-ford-brett-kavanaugh-accuser-christine-ford/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">quick to promote</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4. Women for Trump’s Amy Kremer: Democrats Want to ‘Gin Up the Hysteria Machine’</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans had no problem with Sen. Feinstein when, in late 2017, she demanded Democratic Sen. <a href="https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/12/06/al-franken-urged-to-resign-kamala-harris/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Al Franken’s resignation</a> in response to sexual harassment allegations. Franken didn’t get a pass from Feinstein simply because he was a Democrat: Feinstein wanted him to step down, party affiliation be damned—and the Minnesota senator resigned. But the minute Feinstein has legal concerns about a Republican Supreme Court nominee, Republicans view her as a one-woman hit squad. </font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During a September 17 interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Amy Kremer (co-founder of Women for Trump) had the same knee-jerk reaction to Ford’s accusation as McConnell: she viewed it in strictly partisan terms, insisting that Democrats are trying to “gin up the hysteria machine” with a “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/09/18/kavanaugh-accuser-testimony-amy-kremer-cpt-sot-vpx.cnn" style="text-decoration-line: none;">dog and pony show</a>.” Kremer also asserted that there should be no public testimony from Ford, only closed-door hearings—which is ludicrous. Considering that Ford is making a very serious accusation and that Kavanaugh, if confirmed, could still be on the Supreme Court 30 years from now, anything the Palo Alto University professor has to say on the matter should be heard publicly.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5. Joe Walsh Attacks Democrats for Waiting to ‘Drop This Dirt’</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even former Rep. Joe Walsh (a Tea Party wingnut) called Donald Trump, Jr. out for mocking Christine Blasey Ford, correctly denouncing him as an “<a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/406989-joe-walsh-trump-jr-is-an-uncaring-narrow-minded-idiot" style="text-decoration-line: none;">uncaring, narrow-minded idiot</a>” on Twitter. But Walsh, like McConnell and Kremer, has turned Ford’s accusation into an opportunity to play partisan politics, posting on Twitter, “So Dems waited until the very last minute to drop this dirt, and now they want to wait again to hear from her? You don’t think they’re trying to drag this thing out, do you?”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Walsh likes to see himself as a law-and-order man, but when a Republican Supreme Court nominee is accused of attempted rape, it’s all the Democrats’ fault, in Walsh’s mind.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><b>Trump: 'We do a much better job' with children at the border than Obama</b></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">BY ALICIA COHN - 06/23/18 09:10 AM EDT  2,966</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1,971</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">   </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump: 'We do a much better job' with children at the border than Obama</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">President Trump on Saturday defended his administration for treating migrant children detained at the border "much better" than former President Obama's administration, amid controversy over immigration policies that have separated thousands of children from their parents.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"We do a much better job while at the same time maintaining a MUCH stronger Border! Mainstream Fake Media hates this story," he tweeted. </span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Trump also referred to the conservative aggregation site the Drudge Report, which has previously linked to reports and photos taken of detainment facilities during the Obama administration.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The headline did not appear on The Drudge Report on Saturday morning.[?]</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump this week ended a controversial practice that separated migrant children and detained them separately from their parents when families were caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. The detainment facilities were harshly criticized by some as "internment camps" and prisons. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Last month, a number of journalists and Democrats posted critical tweets linking to photos of detention centers at the border that had been taken in 2014, during the Obama administration. Trump at the time blasted social media users who he said were trying to make his administration “look bad.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Trump administration has restricted access to the detainment centers, but released video footage earlier this week. The video shows children in metal cages inside a warehouse. Many appear to have space blankets that look like foil.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==</font></div>

<div style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/breitbart-news-drudge-alt-right-koch-trump/</font></div>

<h1 class="entry-title" style=" text-align: left; padding: 35px 30px 10px; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Building the House of Breitbart</font></h1>

<p style=" text-align: left; line-height: 1.6em; position: relative; padding: 0px 30px; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">How <cite>Breitbart News</cite> rose on the darkest of money to hijack the conservative media — and how liberals helped them do it. Three and a half years after he inherited Andrew Breitbart’s right-wing media fiefdom, Steve Bannon finally proved himself a worthy heir: he bet against<span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: ;"> </span>Bloomberg Businessweek<span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: ;">’s ability to read and won. “Steve Bannon runs the new vast right-wing conspiracy,” <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2015-steve-bannon/">ran the subhead</a> to that week’s cover story, “and he wants to take down both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.” Bannon, now months deep into his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/us/politics/donald-trump-stephen-bannon-paul-manafort.html">new role as chief executive</a> of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, had, at the time, been nurturing an ostensibly nonpartisan, nonprofit research group, the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), into a perverse mirror image of ProPublica. Clinton Cash, written by GAI’s lead investigator and president Peter Schweizer and published by HarperCollins, had already been subject to a New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html">front-page exposé</a>. The nonprofit had even partnered with Newsweek, ABC News, and 60 Minutes on research-intensive scoops. That October, with the impending publication of Schweizer’s Bush Bucks, the team at Bloomberg had been somehow induced to believe that GAI was “as eager to go after establishment Republicans such as Boehner or Jeb Bush as Democrats like Clinton.” But it wasn’t true. At twenty pages of actual text and about 120 footnotes — less than ten of which were primary source documents remotely indicative of original reporting — Schweizer’s Bush Bucks was more term paper than tome. By page count, it was one full order of magnitude less labor-intensive than the 256-page Clinton Cash.</span></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Worse still: Bloomberg’s Joshua Green knew this, or should have — he reports that he had “obtained” an advance copy. (Green did not reply to requests for comment.)</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just as his predecessor — the late outrage hustler Andrew Breitbart — had infamously “<a href="http://www.wired.com/2010/03/ff_andrew_brietbart/" style="">hacked the media</a>,” a quintessentially amoral framing courtesy of Wired, Bannon had gotten the exact coverage he wanted simply by daring professional reporters to do their jobs.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in 2009, Breitbart <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/could-andrew-breitbart-become-the-rights-arianna-huffington/" style="">launched</a> his libertarian title Big Government on the back of an explosive, but thoroughly dishonest, hidden-camera sting. He had simultaneously released full, unedited transcripts of those undercover videos. These publicly available transcripts so completely contradicted the claims professed by Big Government that its story, and the site itself, ought to have been dead within a week. And yet for months, no one — not CNN, not the New York Times, not MSNBC, not even the Daily Show — had the time or the resources to bother.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The elevation of Breitbart’s unique brand of lightweight, gossamer junk to the status of national news tells — in part — the story of what gets dredged up by the low-friction vacuum of journalism’s protracted financial collapse. By tapping Bannon, Trump not only acquired a reliable conduit to Breitbart’s unruly community of libertarians, paleoconservatives, and alt-right brown shirts. He also acquired access to the GAI’s well-financed lawyers, data scientists, and forensic investigators — an opposition machine that the cash-strapped majors in the news media have already proven desperate to cut deals with.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But just as importantly, the rise of Breitbart’s media network also tells the story of petit-bourgeois ideological entrepreneurship, fueled by white-hot, fame-hungry, and not especially consonant feelings of class angst, and the haute-bourgeois venture capital that it so easily located.</font></p>

<h4 style=" margin-top: 50px; margin-bottom: 25px; line-height: 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hollywood Freaks</font></h4>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">without history — built on real-estate fraud, religious cults, and fantasy at the terminus of Western civilization — Los Angeles has produced its own breed of messiah-bullies for the American right.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before serving jail time for felony convictions of conspiracy, honest services fraud, and tax evasion, disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff wrestled for the team at Beverly Hills High, picked on local nerds, and at one point <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/314/its-never-over" style="">destroyed the cello</a> of future public radio food critic Jonathan Gold.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Abramoff worked in Hollywood for a decade, a career that culminated in the production of a 1980s action movie, Red Scorpion, intended to praise the CIA-funded Angolan mercenary Jonas Savimbi. (South Africa’s apartheid regime generously financed the film, which made back about a quarter of its $16 million budget.)</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before running the Internet’s first widely trafficked news and gossip tip sheet, Matt Drudge worked in Hollywood too — at the CBS gift shop in Television City. Andrew Breitbart was an early subscriber to Drudge’s email newsletter, soon enough becoming a Drudge Report employee.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Breitbart was a Brentwood brat, the adopted son of restauranteurs whose English-style steakhouse, Fox & Hounds, had been popular with California’s actor-cum-governor Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy. In 1991, Breitbart returned to his hometown after four inebriated years at Tulane University in New Orleans, with nothing to show for it but an American Studies degree and a newly purchased Saab convertible.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He soon scared up a low-paying gig driving scripts around Los Angeles, where — alienated by the shift on KROQ from eighties post-punk, like Echo and the Bunnymen and New Order, to what he called the “whiny, suicidal freaks” of Seattle grunge — Breitbart began his life-changing love affair with right-wing talk radio.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Captivated by Rush Limbaugh, inching along in traffic between “every single Hollywood office of note,” according to his memoir, “including Michael Ovitz’s, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s, and Michael Eisner’s,” he found, “the professor I always wanted, but never had the privilege to study under.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nearby, but in another world entirely, former Goldman Sachs investment banker Steve Bannon was negotiating the sale of Castle Rock Entertainment to media mogul Ted Turner. Bannon took his payment in the form of royalties to five untested sitcoms, including Seinfeld. The gamble wound up funding his foray into conservative documentary filmmaking circa 2004, inevitably drawing him into Breitbart’s orbit.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Individually, all of these men experienced as a visceral, unmediated reality what many of their future acolytes merely experienced as disaffected consumers: a deep-seated and ineffable alienation from the products of the entertainment industry.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As kids, Breitbart and his childhood friend Larry Solov — his future legal counsel and currently the president and CEO of Breitbart News Network — were once repeatedly pelted with tennis balls by blockbuster action star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who reportedly cackled as they huddled in the corner of the court weeping.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It seemed that proximity (so close and yet so far from the levers of fame, glamor, and wealth) had magnified the psychic sting everyone feels: the average American’s general state of Hollywood media bombardment, with its lens-greasing insinuation of perfection — physical, ethical, even spiritual — broadcast into every available market. Proximity ignited engines of rage in these men, genuine reactionary responses.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weirdly, this resentment made Andrew Breitbart kind of a big deal within Los Angeles’s creative underclass.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Every noncelebrity journalist in Los Angeles sort of hung out together,” according to the Daily Beast’s executive editor Noah Shachtman, one of those noncelebrity journalists at the time. “That’s how Breitbart knows everyone.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1997, at Drudge’s recommendation, a then-conservative pundit named Arianna Huffington poached Breitbart to help put together her proto-Huffington Post, called Arianna Online. He became her director of research and worked from an almost unbelievably hermetic office inside her vast personal study, up a spiral staircase, hidden behind a bookshelf and a large wooden door, that was itself masked by a painting of two Venetian cardinals.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“She would have admired his work as the West Coast editor of Drudge Report,” another contemporary from Los Angeles’s journalism diaspora, Sploid founder and one-time Wonkette owner Ken Layne says. “That kind of minimalist blogging — just choosing links and writing a great headline and placing it on the page — is a real art form, and there’s maybe a dozen people who do it well.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(If you have a taste for this medium, these examples from Breitbart’s time at Drudge make the case as well as any: “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19981206103043/http:/www.drudgereport.com/" style="">George Michael admits losing dignity with toilet arrest</a>” and “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19990127161527/http:/www.drudgereport.com/" style="">Bob Dole is now owner of Lewinsky’s condominium at the posh Watergate</a>.”)</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Breitbart’s success grew with the rising tide. As Drudge’s traffic exploded in the wake of several eye-catching scoops — including the first word of the Lewinsky scandal and the disclosure of Jerry Seinfeld’s belligerent million-dollar-per-episode ultimatum — Breitbart found ways to monetize the relationship. Breitbart.com launched in 2005 as a site that aggregated and published news directly from the wire services, AP, Reuters, and others, generating ad revenue off the inbound hyperlinks from Drudge.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Breitbart had also co-written a nonfiction book, Hollywood Interrupted, with a hardworking entertainment-industry muckraker and Spy magazine alum named Mark Ebner. A well-reported but conceptually muddy attempt at updating Kenneth Anger’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-Babylon-Legendary-Underground-Hollywoods/dp/0440153255" style="">Hollywood Babylon</a>, the book codified Breitbart’s conservative politics in relation to the entertainment industry’s self-evident sins: its debauchery, its depravity, its profligacy, its aimless and vain do-gooderism, its hypocrisy, its shallow obsession with broad demographic consensus both in semantics and in etiquette (also known as political correctness).</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crucially — with the disembodied voice of Professor Rush riding shotgun in his Saab — Breitbart located these ills not alongside the straightforward commercial imperatives obviously driving them, but beside something else that they only superficially resembled. Namely, “Liberalism”: libidinous, excessive, loosey-goosey.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Discursively, these right-wing theories on cultural perversion hardly began with Breitbart. They echoed rhetoric whose origin lay somewhere beyond the House Un-American Activities Committee’s witch hunts that led inexorably to the Hollywood blacklist, somewhere even beyond the Third Reich’s obsession with Max Nordau and his theory of “degenerate art.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But what Breitbart had innovated was a potent recalibration of this argument into a Gen-X argot steeped in pop-culture garbage, distraction media, and HR-department corporate kitsch. For all that rot crowding the surface of American cultural life, and also for some really brilliant and genuinely transgressive art — basically for anything that ran counter to the sensibility of a certain malcontent suburban white male — Breitbart offered a new diagnosis.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He called it the “Democrat-Media Complex” in his memoir, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=site:breitbart.com+%22the+Progressive+Left%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8" style="">but what stuck</a> was his sneering and repeated appropriation of “the Progressive Left.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A famously bad student — with minimal interest in intellectual coherence but with the conviction of a cornered animal — Breitbart began building this argument on the fly in whatever medium (panel show, radio phone-in, blog post, book deal) made available to him.</font></p>

<h4 style=" margin-top: 50px; margin-bottom: 25px; line-height: 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mixed Bizness</font></h4>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">s first foray into group blogging was, naturally, Big Hollywood in 2008. But he didn’t fully emerge from the shadows of his old collaborators, Huffington and Drudge, until the fall of 2009, when he launched Big Government off the propulsive energy of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles’s hidden-camera “sting” against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For years, ACORN’s successful get-out-the-vote efforts had brought it into the crosshairs of Republican campaign apparatchiks who saw the organization as an acute threat: a demographically advantageous increase in voter turnout, particularly among minorities and the poor, that largely favored their Democratic opponents.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The depth, convolution, and spuriousness of the accusations thrown at ACORN in the wake of Obama’s 2008 presidential victory primed many conservatives for this deceptively packaged footage.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But ironically, it only dimly informed the production of the videos themselves. O’Keefe said <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=XpB5w-rpUq4C&lpg=PP1&dq=o%27keefe%20breakthrough&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=deep suspicion&f=false" style="">in his memoir Breakthrough</a> that he barely knew anything about ACORN prior to the operation, other than harboring “a deep suspicion” based on one news clip of Baltimore ACORN activists protesting unfair banking practices by squatting in foreclosed homes.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giles copped to the same level of ignorance on Hannity, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiEieLdZxCs" style="">telling Fox News viewers</a>, “We didn’t know about them before we came up with the idea, really.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his own memoir, Righteous Indignation, Breitbart also confessed to a cavalier disengagement with the subject:</font></p>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In June 2009, I didn’t know much about the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). My attitude toward it was a generic conservative’s attitude: I knew that the lack of interest the mainstream media were showing in ACORN — especially with all the accusations leveled against it regarding its illegal voter fraud and ties with the Democratic Party — meant that there had to be something really, truly horrific about it.</font></p>

</blockquote>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To put the level of self-reported incompetence into context here, a LexisNexis search of print stories mentioning ACORN produces 4,468 articles from January 2007 to December 2008, right through the presidential race. Of these, 1,737 were published in October 2008 in the run-up to the election, and the majority of those stories dealt with the voter fraud allegations.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s little wonder that O’Keefe and Giles were forced to pay $100,000 and $50,000 settlements, respectively, in defamation suits brought against them by an unjustly fired ACORN employee.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Breitbart <a href="http://www.webcitation.org/5rbhsjhzR" style="">released</a> a similarly skewed video of US Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod, excerpted from her speech at an NAACP event, he too <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/sherrod-breitbart-lawsuit-settle" style="">was forced to settle</a> a defamation suit (albeit posthumously).</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Valuable resources have been, could be, and still should be, expended on fact-checking the dense feed of misinformation discharged from Breitbart’s content mill — but journalistic methods have never been one of the salient details explaining the organization’s rise to prominence.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those salient details have been, in ascending order of importance: Andrew Breitbart’s unique aesthetic of confrontational punditry and the cult of personality it engendered; the effective abandonment of working-class constituencies by both of America’s major political parties accompanied by the diffusion of middle-class, white America’s economic frustrations into scapegoats; and a long-gestating hostile takeover of the Republican Party by Libertarians Charles and David Koch and their <a href="http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigations/politicsandgovernment/2067/the_billionaire_donors_club/" style="">billionaire donor’s club</a> which — after three decades of deliberate chess moves, primarily in the form of bad-faith charitable giving — finally bore fruit in the 2010 midterm elections with the Tea Party wave.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The career of Mike Flynn, the man Breitbart tapped to helm Big Government in 2009, almost perfectly demonstrates the confluence of these forces.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Flynn held the lead role at Big Government for three years, continuing on for another four when the role shifted into political editor of Breitbart.com’s newly consolidated web presence, and until his untimely death last June. He was a gleeful confrontationalist well-suited to the Breitbart tonality, whose combat dicta — “always engage” and “always play offense” — were celebrated <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/06/27/mike-flynn-breitbarts-secretary-war/" style="">in at least one obit</a>.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before joining this right-wing media powerhouse, Flynn worked for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) from 1997–2004, where he served as the <a href="http://www.whig.com/article/20160624/ARTICLE/306249849" style="">director of legislation and policy</a> for five years.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For decades, ALEC has served as the primary mechanism by which the US Chamber of Commerce and the Kochs’ network of corporate interests have diluted federal environmental and labor laws and garnered other concessions.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ALEC routinely drafts “model legislation” for its dim-witted, dues-paying underlings in state houses and local assemblies to dutifully pass into law. During Flynn’s tenure, ALEC managed to pass “<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2002/09/ghostwriting-law" style="">truth in sentencing</a>” bills in forty states. This misnamed legislation was codrafted with the massive for-profit prison firm Corrections Corporation of America, which had the morbidly self-interested goal of making it harder for inmates to get parole.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Flynn then spent some time as the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-flynn-2576614" style="">director of government affairs</a> for the <a href="http://harpers.org/blog/2009/05/corporate-front-man-richard-berman-manages-the-news-on-key-labor-backed-bill/" style="">astroturfing specialists</a> at Berman and Company before returning to the bosom of the Kochs’ nonprofit network, spending two years at the Reason Foundation and then finally joining Breitbart’s nascent media endeavor.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A decade of experience as an advocate for corporate interests in government had exactly the effect one would expect on Mike Flynn’s tenure running a news website. In one telling episode, Flynn’s Big Government ran three <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2012/03/27/the-crane-chronicles-part-i-how-and-why-ed-crane-pushed-the-koch-brothers-conspiracy-theory/" style="">anonymously</a> <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/04/04/Crane-Chronicles-II-feeding-Board-Members" style="">authored</a> <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/04/23/2-craneIII" style="">hit pieces</a> against the president of the libertarian Cato Insitute, Ed Crane, amid a seemingly accidental, but very bitter, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-kochs-vs-cato" style="">public feud</a> between Crane and his think tank’s paymasters, Charles and David Koch.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crane had spoken out of turn about Charles Koch’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Science-Success-Market-Based-Management-Largest/dp/0470139889" style="">goofy management-philosophy book</a> to the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer under circumstances that he had believed to be off the record. For “anyone who doubts the Kochs are narcissistic enough for that to be a motivating factor,” J. Arthur Bloom <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/2012/04/30/the-frumming-of-cato/" style="">had only one question</a>: “What kind of self-respecting billionaire writes a self-help book?”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Obviously, no economics training is required to understand the conflict of interest in letting a career lobbyist run a news organization. In the theory toolkit available to Breitbart’s early Tea Party readers, this would be “common sense.” Flynn’s work as ambassador between self-interested global business elites and career politicians would constitute crony capitalism at its most refined.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Educated libertarian operatives and senior personnel have since had to devise sophisticate rationalizations to alleviate their consciences.</font></p>

<h4 style=" margin-top: 50px; margin-bottom: 25px; line-height: 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Broken Train</font></h4>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dissent requires enough money to sustain activists and carry a message to voters,” Eric O’Keefe (no relation to ACORN muckraker James) wrote in his 1999 book Who Rules America: The People vs. The Political Class.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">O’Keefe served as the national field coordinator for the Libertarian presidential ticket in 1980, when David Koch ran as the vice presidential nominee, very explicitly in an effort to bring his considerable wealth to bear on the campaign. O’Keefe spent the intervening decades as a quiet architect overseeing the Kochs’ plan to remodel the GOP in their own image.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though Eric O’Keefe is not a blood relation to James O’Keefe, he was one of the first people that James and Hannah’s lawyer — infamous Senate Watergate counsel, Mike “Mad Dog” Madigan — would reach out to.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sources close to James O’Keefe confirmed that Eric played a lead role in the management of James’s emergency legal trust. (This information was garnered from emails provided by an anonymous source to both myself and my frequent coreporter on the O’Keefes for <a href="http://wonkette.com/author/matthew-phelan-and-liz-farkas" style="">Wonkette</a> and <a href="http://gawker.com/james-okeefe-employs-a-convicted-felon-1538633934" style="">Gawker</a>, New York state-licensed private investigator Liz Farkas.)</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Eric O’Keefe, then, private capital plays both a virtuous and necessary role in politics. It provides complex, nuanced, and counterintuitive policy proposals with the robust patronage that they so desperately need to get a fair hearing in the marketplace of ideas.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In business,” he writes in Who Rules America, “entrepreneurs with innovative ideas frequently bring their product to market with the backing of just a few investors . . . Campaign-finance reform, as defined by the elite media and their partners in the seats of power, is a sham that uses high-sounding rhetoric in the service of incumbency protection.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, for the professional technicians toiling away at the heart of the libertarian right, placing limits on campaign spending is tantamount to gerrymandering. It only aims to protect the tired, establishment politicians from courageous outsiders’ weird and innovative ideas.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This comes from an alternate universe of radical theory, taking a parallax view on the persistent problem of money in politics. In this version, politicians — not wealthy donors — corrupt the system. It takes as axiomatic that all governments, even democratic ones, inevitably trend toward criminality and totalitarianism: a difficult presupposition to challenge in American political life considering the country was founded on it.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is the kind of carefully crafted intellectual scaffolding upon which Andrew Breitbart and his compatriots have swung, and scaled, and beat their chests. Very real financial and intellectual resources have been devoted to producing an entire corpus of literature to defend and legitimize the gut beliefs of a wealthy group of conservatives, libertarians, and Randian Objectivists.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The dissemination of that literature to a mass audience operates on a highly coded, conscious level that has been partitioned from the preconscious bigotries that it simultaneously excites. This has been a seemingly arduous fact for liberals to properly grasp, but it is no less true for it. People who have been led to believe that they claim a direct lineage to “The Party of Lincoln,” that Soviet Russia manipulated the Civil Rights Movement to undermine America during the Cold War, that the welfare reforms of LBJ’s Great Society legislation were actually just a cynical ploy to purchase blocs of underprivileged voters, and so on, are people who simply cannot be shamed by charges of racism. They earnestly do not consider themselves racists; they perceive the charge as an ad-hominem attack.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrew Breitbart’s confrontational style leaned into these hostile reactions and <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-politico/2010/02/19/O-Keefe-says-next-video-ready-to-go/stories/201002190233" style="">recognizeding the value</a> of negative press.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the establishment media attacks “a Hannah Giles, or a James O’Keefe,” he once boasted to Politico, “it only weaponizes them . . . And that’s the reason they have a smile on their face — they know that they now have a platform. They’re not shying away from their notoriety here.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the time, Breitbart had high hopes that he could somehow mass-produce the success he garnered by stumbling on O’Keefe and Giles. “My business model is I want to be a talent scout,” he told Politico during that same conversation. “I want to be an American Idol for weaponized freedom fighters.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unfortunately for Breitbart, it was not meant to be. Savvier ideological entrepreneurs cut him out.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James O’Keefe also wanted to stake out a position as “talent scout,” and, according to individuals formerly affiliated with his competing venture, Eric O’Keefe supplied the initial salaries for James’s “citizen journalism” group, Project Veritas. Then serving as the president and CEO of the Tea Party astroturfer the Sam Adams Alliance, Eric installed a former employee, Izzy Santa, as Project Veritas’s first executive director.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You’d be great at this,” another Sam Adams board member, Denis Calabrese, reportedly told Santa. “We need someone to control James.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is how Project Veritas became the first stop for every aspiring hidden camera stunt-artist, fresh out of the College Republicans. His brand was selected; Breitbart’s was passed over.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Brietbart passed away in March 2012, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/03/the_empire_that_andrew_breitbart_built_is_struggling_to_maintain_its_brand_now_that_its_founder_is_dead_.2.html" style="">many wondered</a> whether or not his organization could survive. His larger-than-life presence, his proficiency in cable-news optics, his Barnum-like ability to pull off promotional stunts (like hijacking Anthony Weiner’s press conference at the height of his sexting scandal): all of these qualities left many with the illusion that Andrew Breitbart was the animating force behind Breitbart News.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In reality, Andrew Breitbart was more like an ad-agency creative director — adept at getting his client’s message maximal attention, but ultimately replaceable. He primarily functioned as a passionate conduit between the media contacts he had built up during his early years in Los Angeles and the luxuriously financed political operatives who were hoping to place their narratives in the mainstream news cycle.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A quieter Breitbart News emerged from the demise of their loudmouth standard-bearer, one that its opponents found blessedly (but deceptively) easier to ignore.</font></p>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="dropcaps2" style="font-weight: 600; float: left; padding: 0px; background-color: red; margin-right: 10px; width: 80px; height: 80px; text-align: center; line-height: 80px;">I</span>t’s possible that the Brexit referendum would have played out in nearly the same fashion as it did last June even if Breitbart hadn’t opened its London offices in February 2014. Even so, expanding the media organization in an alliance with Britain’s nativist wing would have remained a shrewd tactical maneuver for Steve Bannon. As with Big Government’s ability to serve as an intermediary between right-wing political operatives and Tea Party audiences, Breitbart London could occupy a similar nexus at a similarly critical time.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In London,” <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/business/media/breitbart-news-network-plans-global-expansion.html?_r=0" style="">the New York Times reported</a>, “Breitbart News Network hopes to support a nascent European Tea Party before parliamentary elections in May.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Funding this expansion was some $10 million in outside investment Andrew Breitbart garnered in 2011 — less than a year before an unexpected heart attack would end his life.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the two investors was <a href="http://www.breitbartunmasked.com/2014/02/18/how-breitbart-news-is-spending-breitbarts-millions/" style="">rumored to be</a> an eccentric, Islamophobic tech billionaire, Aubrey Chernick, who had previously backed the conservative PJ Media blog network. Chernick had befriended Breitbart while also living in Brentwood, in a stately Mandeville Canyon mansion <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/15/the-death-of-pjtv-how-aubrey-chernick-s-right-wing-media-dream-died.html" style="">one visitor described</a> as secured behind “a gate that looks a little bit like the gate in King Kong.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These investments kept Breitbart News above water for years, operating like an even more opaque version of the dark-money patronage system that propped up its nonprofit allies. Conservative new-media journalism ventures being — just like all new-media journalism ventures — hopelessly unprofitable, Breitbart’s websites had claimed shockingly <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1530877/000153087711000003/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml" style="">paltry revenue</a>, somewhere between one dollar and one million dollars. As Fortune <a href="http://fortune.com/2011/09/27/breitbart-raises-money-for-something/" style="">noted</a>, this shortfall represented a critical failure to monetize the sites’ twenty million page views per month.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But business plans matter less when you are someone else’s business expense.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Breitbart London’s first managing editor and its future editor in chief, Raheem Kassam, was hired away from the <a href="https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/the-american-far-right-s-trojan-horse-in-westminster-6799f442d6ce#.g7gvuhq2b" style="">neoconservative Henry Jackson Society</a>: a UK think tank whose early signatories included members of George W. Bush’s Iraq War brain trust (former assistant secretary of defense Richard Perle, his former Defense Department subordinate Bruce P. Jackson, and some imperial cheerleaders from the late neocon think tank Project for a New American Century, including Bill Kristol and Clifford May).</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The society’s goals during Kassam’s four years within the group appear to have been to ratchet up public anxieties about Islamic radicals at home and to lobby for new regime-change adventures abroad.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At some point, a London-based college newspaper <a href="http://content.yudu.com/Library/A1nkge/LondonStudentissue10/resources/index.htm" style="">caught Kassam</a> running a sham student group, Student Rights, out of the Henry Jackson Society’s offices. Through Student Rights, Kassam would pressure local universities to disinvite Muslim speakers, while simultaneously defending the free-speech rights of the extreme xenophobes of the British National Party.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kassam — a Westminster-educated son of Indian Muslim immigrants — is a very weird young man who has had an outsize impact on British politics despite being too marginal and obscure <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=Raheem_Kassam" style="">for Wikipedia</a> to let him <a href="http://liberalconspiracy.org/2012/06/01/who-is-raheem-kassam-and-what-wikipedia-page/" style="">write an entry about himself</a>.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a move presaging Bannon’s career change this summer, Kassam stepped down from Breitbart London in October 2014 to become a <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/10/23/breitbart-london-editor-becomes-senior-aide-to-ukips-nigel-farage/" style="">senior adviser to Nigel Farage</a>, the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). Mission unaccomplished — Farage failed once again to secure a parliamentary seat in the May 2015 general election — Kassam returned to his old day job as editor in chief of Breitbart London like, for example, a crony capitalist through a revolving door.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There — with Bannon’s aggressive support and over the objections of some of the site’s editors, including rising star Milo Yiannopoulos — Kassam began using the vertical as a mouthpiece for the most virulently anti-immigration and pro-Brexit wing of the fractured UKIP party.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s a known thing,” the party’s former media leader Alexandra Phillips <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/marieleconte/how-breitbart-tried-and-failed-to-take-over-ukip?utm_term=.xyqokJd8J#.gl2rRMA2M" style="">told BuzzFeed</a>, “especially when you speak to young UKIP activists; Raheem and Breitbart are the best tool. In terms of internal communications it’s become a great force, in terms of party infighting.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though Roger Ailes perhaps first pioneered this vulgar synergy — with <a href="http://gawker.com/5814150/roger-ailes-secret-nixon-era-blueprint-for-fox-news" style="">Television News Incorporated</a> in the 1970s and then again with Fox News in the 1990s — Breitbart appears to have been the first to successfully adapt the model to new media. Plausibly deniable and demonically effective, Breitbart News has become an only ostensibly independent organization, operating in practice as the for-profit communications wing of various political campaigns.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon <a href="http://fortune.com/2012/09/21/joe-ricketts-the-new-billionaire-political-activist/" style="">accepted a commission</a> from billionaire TD Ameritrade founder and Chicago Cubs owner Joe Rickets to produce <a href="http://whyichangedmyvote.com/" style="">a series of documentary-style commercials</a> featuring disillusioned Obama voters who were planning to support Romney in the 2012 election. Rickets also funded Eric O’Keefe’s electioneering nonprofit projects, like his “<a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2014/02/campaign-for-primary-accountability-2/" style="">Campaign for Primary Accountability</a>” Super PAC.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last year, Breitbart News <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/04/hedge-fund-magnate-backing-cruz-is-major-investor-in-breitbart-news-network-205434" style="">received substantial funding</a> from Long Island–based hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, who has donated upwards of $15 million to conservative groups since 2012. (It was happy, satisfied customer Mercer, and his daughter Rebekah, who <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/donald-trump-mercers-stephen-bannon" style="">reportedly</a> pushed for Trump to hire Bannon as his new campaign chief.)</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More recently, and most significantly for the general election, four anonymous sources, three of them Breitbart employees, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/breitbart-staffers-believe-trump-has-given-money-to-site-for?utm_term=.hj5nR5jv5#.sqvx0pyop" style="">told BuzzFeed</a> that Donald Trump’s campaign itself had “provided undisclosed financial backing to the outlet in exchange for glowing coverage.” One source explicitly described it as a “pay-for-play” relationship, with written contracts. When he resigned last March, Breitbart’s national security correspondent Jordan Schachtel said <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/03/breitbart-staffers-resign-jordan-schachtel-jarrett-stepman-220730#ixzz4HcUr6Y9Y" style="">the site had transformed</a> into “something resembling an unaffiliated media Super PAC for the Trump campaign.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Regular visitors to Breitbart.com might be surprised to learn the full extent of the site’s shady operations: a gray-market information bazaar with so many countervailing grifts and mercenary positions as to render the routine questions of journalistic bias quaint by comparison.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s not even clear that Stephen Bannon thinks Donald Trump would actually make for a good president. As he described it to former NPR executive Ken Stern, writing for Vanity Fair, Trump is “a <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/breitbart-stephen-bannon-donald-trump-master-plan" style="">blunt instrument</a> for us,” adding, “I don’t know whether he really gets it or not.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But what is “it” for Bannon?</font></p>

<h4 style=" margin-top: 50px; margin-bottom: 25px; line-height: 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pressure Zone</font></h4>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="dropcaps2" style="font-weight: 600; float: left; padding: 0px; background-color: red; margin-right: 10px; width: 80px; height: 80px; text-align: center; line-height: 80px;">H</span>e gave a clue on February 10, 2014, when he showed up at the <a href="http://malloryfactor.com/the-new-york-meeting/" style="">New York Meeting</a>, a gathering of wealthy New York conservative donors and gadflies (and pseudonymous interlopers like myself). Addressing a large ballroom — and an unarchived livestream — Bannon listed with lucidity and precision the economic havoc being wrought on news organizations, citing the past two years of quarterly reports for the New York Times, the dismal 2013 sale of the Boston Globe (purchased for $70 million after commanding over $1 billion in 1993), and other miseries.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He strongly suggested that his audience read Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson’s The Second Machine Age, a <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n05/john-lanchester/the-robots-are-coming" style="">well-reviewed dystopian disquisition</a> on advances in machine learning and automation, as argued by two senior MIT professors. The book focuses on what Bannon called “the financial carnage to come” as these innovations precipitate massive waves of unemployment and unrest.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon warned that “there are more tears shed for answered prayers than unanswered” and worried about a likely “implosion” of the conservative movement’s supposed foes in “the mainstream media.” He expressed concern for greater class divisions as legitimate, cost-intensive news further retreats behind paywalls.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Culturally,” he said, “you won’t have organs in the arts, in culture, in politics, that can be centers and institutions that can actually contextualize information for people; that it’ll be more USA Today, or kinda very simplistic stuff, and not high ‘value added.’”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Bannon, then, “it” is the inevitable populist revolt brought on by the increasing disposability of human beings in the labor market, the cultural fallout from this revolt, and (implicitly) his desire to steer the ensuing chaos in line with his right-wing ideological precepts.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One arguable barometer of his success (apart from usurping a lead role in the Republican Party’s campaign for the presidency, of course) is the surprising extent to which liberal writers have helped Breitbart News write the Left out of recent populist history.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/breitbart-stephen-bannon-donald-trump-master-plan" style="">Here again</a> is <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/07/AR2011010706063.html" style="">former NPR executive</a> Ken Stern writing in Vanity Fair:</font></p>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Breitbart philosophy revolves around the core belief that a wildly corrupt ruling class, of both parties, has abandoned American workers in favor of policies that line its own pockets and the pockets of corporate interests. And its white-hot anger stems from how the leading institutions of American life have engineered all sorts of arrangements hostile to American workers: trade deals that favor the interest of large multinational companies over American workers, open-border policies that serve the needs of agro-businesses at the expense of low-wage Americans, and, more generally, a set of globalist policies that support transnational business interests without regard for the deteriorating status and position of middle America . . . .</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Bannon, it is not magnificent Apple making America the model of innovation, but, as he said to me, “fucking Apple, making iPhones with slave labor.” That view of American corporations is in vogue these days, but Bannon and Breitbart were not only ahead of the curve, they helped invent the curve.</font></p>

</blockquote>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How this argument managed to reach publication speaks volumes about the current political moment, thirty years past the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council and its <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/02/atkins-dlc-third-way-clinton-blair-schroeder-social-democracy/" style="">laissez-faire corporatist</a> New Democrats, and eight years into the post-partisan technocratic rhetoric of the Obama era.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is as if a ragtag coalition of labor organizers, environmental activists, anarchists, and New Left holdovers never waged the 1999 “Battle of Seattle.” It’s as if Wall Street had never been occupied.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The entire careers of certain public intellectuals and the whole lifespans of several progressive publications and NGOs appear to have just slipped past Ken Stern during those nine years he served as executive vice president and then CEO of National Public Radio.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Without providing credit and seemingly by osmosis, Bannon has managed to absorb and redeploy many of the Left’s critiques of neoliberal corruption for a right-leaning populist audience. Bannon and Schweizer’s documentary adaptation of Clinton Cash, for example, namedrops Naomi Klein’s concept of “<a href="https://youtu.be/td2pyyCau30?t=21m37s" style="">disaster capitalism</a>.” When Bannon <a href="https://youtu.be/CMZFfxFl53k?t=31s" style="">described the target</a> of Breitbart.com’s outrage and scrutiny, he quoted practically <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=QdWhTxZN_DkC&lpg=PP1&dq=thomas%20frank%20wrecking%20crew&pg=PA19#v=onepage&q=" the="the" washington="washington" boom="boom" that="that" began="began" in="in" eighties="eighties" f="false" style="">chapter</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=IciPKv2KnjQC&lpg=PR1&dq=thomas%20frank%20wrecking%20crew&pg=PA286#v=snippet&q=" wealthiest="wealthiest" metropolitan="metropolitan" areas="areas" in="in" america="America" washington="washington" f="false" style="">verse</a> from Baffler founder Thomas Frank’s opening arguments in The Wrecking Crew. Bannon’s version goes:</font></p>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We tend to look at this imperial city of Washington, this boom town as [having] two groups or two parties that represent the insiders’ commercial party — and that is a collection of insider deals, insider transactions, and a budding aristocracy that has made this the wealthiest city in the country.</font></p>

</blockquote>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a talk for the Third International Conference on Human Dignity, organized by a Christian NGO called the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, <a href="https://youtu.be/FWXScQaZ2uI?t=3m56s" style="">Bannon railed</a> against a “form of capitalism that is taken away from the underlying spiritual and moral foundations of Christianity and — really — Judeo-Christian beliefs.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His argument almost could have been cribbed from Slavoj Žižek’s <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/puppet-and-dwarf" style="">The Puppet and the Dwarf</a>. Bannon explicitly defined two strands of this supposedly new and perverted form of capitalism, distinct from “enlightened capitalism.” First, the “state-sponsored capitalism” found in repressive regimes like China; second, the “Ayn Rand or the Objectivist school of libertarian capitalism.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ignoring for a moment some of the more obvious historical inaccuracies in the argument (slavery and child labor were both indignities brought on by so-called enlightened capitalism, for example), this rhetoric is naturally too steeped in class anger for the tastes of Charles and David Koch — or their lieutenants like Eric O’Keefe — who have since abandoned the Trump campaign, Bannon, and Breitbart News for safer terrain.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Charles Koch famously <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/charles-koch-hillary-clinton-republican-white-house-222349" style="">told the press</a> last March that he thinks Hillary Clinton would be “in some ways” preferable to any of the potential Republican nominees. And Eric O’Keefe became so active in the #NeverTrump faction of the GOP that he created Delegates Unbound, which opened <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/437648/never-trump-delegates-not-bound-convention" style="">an office at the RNC</a> to educate Trump’s pledged delegates about their procedural right to “vote their conscience” over primary voters’ will.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, under Bannon’s tenure and facilitated by new patrons and new allies, Breitbart News pivoted away from the Medicis of libertarian politics. (Arguably, Breitbart himself laid the groundwork for this shift <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/152274/u.s._right_wing_and_gop_presidential_candidates_spreading_paranoid_anti-muslim_hysteria_as_part_of_take-over_strategy" style="">much earlier</a>, when he launched the Big Peace vertical in 2010 with its wall-to-wall, hot-house atmosphere of Islamophobic paranoia.)</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Beyond wealthy kooks like Aubrey Chernick and Robert Mercer, a man who personally financed <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2011/01/hedge-fund-figure-financed-mosque-campaign-032525" style="">a million-dollar ad campaign</a> against the “Ground Zero Mosque”; beyond the neoconservative Middle East hawks of the Henry Jackson Society; beyond Trump and the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that has catapulted him to the top of the Republican ticket, there was also Mostafa El-Gindy, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/26/steve-bannon-florida-registered-vote-donald-trump" style="">Brietbart News’s DC landlord</a>, an Egyptian businessman and former MP with an axe to grind against the Muslim Brotherhood.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Without mentioning their landlord–tenant relationship, Breitbart allowed El-Gindy to <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/01/20/chinese-president-xi-jinping-column-for-al-ahram/" style="">use its site</a> as <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/12/senior-egyptian-statesman-obama-is-losing-long-time-ally-egypt/" style="">a platform</a> to speak as a “<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2013/09/24/eyewitness-public-drove-out-the-muslim-brotherhood/" style="">a leading opposition figure</a>” on Obama’s policies in Egypt. Given the natural opacity of privately held, for-profit corporations, it is difficult to know just how many more of these convenient arrangements are currently keeping the media organization afloat.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And while there are genuine questions about whether Bannon shares his benefactors’ alarmist views on radical Islam — one Breitbart apostate, Ben Shapiro, for instance, <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/8441/i-know-trumps-new-campaign-chairman-steve-bannon-ben-shapiro" style="">has categorized</a> Bannon as merely “an aggressive self-promoter” of “unending ambition” — such questions are surely superseded by how aggressively Bannon has been arguing for these beliefs.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s a very unpleasant topic, but we are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism,” <a href="https://youtu.be/FWXScQaZ2uI?t=7m30s" style="">Bannon told that audience</a> at the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, “and I think this war is metastasizing.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Explicitly evoking the Catholic concept of the church militant, Bannon said that Western, Judeo-Christian civilizations must unify, steeling themselves for this looming global conflict. As many of the Breitbart exiles who opposed Trump <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/steve-bannon-profile-breitbart-trump-campaign-manager" style="">would later tell </a>the Guardian, “Bannon aggressively pushed stories against immigrants and supported linking minorities to terrorism and crime.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During this new regime, the site <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/05/09/6-reasons-why-pamela-gellers-muhammad-cartoon-contest-is-no-different-than-selma/" style="">compared</a> Pamela Geller’s “Draw Mohammed Cartoon Contest” to the civil rights march in Selma. It produced a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZf69qtevWU" style="">video</a> praising an anti-Sharia-law bill in South Carolina. It published a <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/02/political-correctness-protects-muslim-rape-culture/" style="">ridiculous piece</a> by a longtime immigration opponent arguing that “Muslim rape culture” and “honor killings” were somehow “integral to Islam as taught in the Koran and the Hadith.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In short order — as if merely pairing nationalist bigotry with socialist rhetoric were an incantation — this new focus at Breitbart summoned the “<a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/meme-magic" style="">meme magic</a>” neo-Nazi occultists of the alt-right like a clarion call.</font></p>

<h4 style=" margin-top: 50px; margin-bottom: 25px; line-height: 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zatyricon</font></h4>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The hopeless and disparate heterogeneity of these groups made “the alt-right” their popular descriptor. It echoes, precisely and intentionally, the catchall use of “alternative” in the 1990s music industry: empty suits who collectively could not be bothered to differentiate (say) hardcore punk from industrial, jangle pop from shoegaze, antifolk from noise rock, and countless other niche genres from the countless other niche genres out of which hit singles were then emerging.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But still: broad statistical generalizations about the alt-right can be made, thanks to research conducted by the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/08/29/the-alt-right-explained-in-its-own-words/" style="">Washington Post</a>, with tools developed by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/iunetsci/posts/525413194319638" style="">Indiana University’s Network Science Institute</a>. Using the school’s <a href="http://news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/2016/05/observatory-on-social-media.shtml" style="">Observatory on Social Media</a>, the Post studied the exploding use of #AltRightMeans in the days surrounding Hillary Clinton’s first public criticism of the group this August.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their research discovered that the most influential Twitter users during this campaign were four fully grown men — not the boy kings of 4chan that the alt-right is so often imagined to be — Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich), a California attorney, men’s rights activist, and <a href="http://gawker.com/the-d-list-right-wingers-whove-turned-gamergate-into-th-1648410811" style="">opportunistic Gamergate defender</a>; Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet), an editor at Alex Jones’s Infowars; the <a href="https://www.spreaker.com/user/mitchellvii/yourvoice-radio-jared-wyand-threat-of-ra" style="">self-described “Islam and terrorism expert”</a> Jared Wyand (@JaredWyand); and a random guy from California (@magnifier661).</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But, perhaps most significantly, the data-mining and consumer-profiling firm <a href="https://www.demographicspro.com/views/demographics_aboutschmap.shtml" style="">Demographics Pro</a> determined, from this same data set, that the vast majority of #AltRightMeans tweets originated from accounts held by “married white men between forty and sixty years old.” In other words, late-phase Baby Boomers and first-wave Gen X-ers, disgruntled “anti-PC” dudes from the same demographic as Andrew Breitbart: men who very much remember the dream of the nineties.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These men do not match the description of the alt-right that has captured the popular imagination.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Entering journalism at a time when budgets no longer exist, many millennial-aged reporters have found themselves covering online communities, message boards, and social media subcultures with the disciplined regularity of beat reporters. Without sufficient awareness of just how limited and subjective this form of reporting is, they have expended a lot of anxiety in the belief that the alt-right represents a terrifying new dawn of youthful, internet-savvy fascism.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guts have been wrenched in certain sectors of the media (see, for example, <a href="http://fusion.net/story/220646/the-terrifying-allure-of-gamergate-icon-milo-yiannopoulos/" style="">Fusion</a>, New York magazine’s <a href="http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/07/milo-yiannopoulos-and-the-gay-fascist-sophisticate.html" style="">Select/All</a>, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-america-divided/milo-yiannopoulos/" style="">Bloomberg</a>, and the <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/05/meet-milo-yiannopoulos-the-appealing-young-face-of-the-racist-alt-right.html" style="">Daily Beast</a>, among others) over the threatening idea that the alt-right might make white nationalism and fascism “cool.” As the <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/what-is-the-alt-right/" style="">Daily Dot</a> pointed out, many Breitbart readers and critics, largely unschooled in the junk drawer of far-right ideologies that comprise the original coiners of the term “alternative right,” seem to view it as a “younger, ballsier rejection of the GOP establishment and political correctness as a whole.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Central to these concerns is mediagenic enfant terrible Milo Yiannopoulos, a Bannon hire poached from the UK tech press during the Breitbart London expansion. The paradox of Yiannopoulos’s right-wing politics and his professed gay, Jewish identity has captivated fans and opponents — a not-atypical role in the conservative media pundit-sphere, served in the past by the likes of Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and Larry Elder. Casuistic and glib, Yiannopoulos’s defenses of Gamergaters and the alt-right have been instrumental in drawing attention to these movements, while simultaneously willfully misconstruing their character, and — perhaps most importantly for Yiannopoulos — elevating him from journalist manqué and posh wino to the status of certified public figure.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Several vying definitions of alt-right have been wielded since the term suddenly became a featured player in 2016’s political theater revue. In some contexts, it connotes the young, conservative, and largely male trolls who congregate at sites like 4chan and Reddit; in others, the readers of Breitbart.com, who obviously tend to skew older and who have apparently decided that the alt-right is just the latest iteration of Tea Party insurgency; it may represent any Trump supporter susceptible to racial appeals and strongman demagoguery; or, lastly, the very small cadre of white nationalists who began describing themselves as the alt-right around 2010, when a former executive editor for the libertarian <a href="http://takimag.com/" style="">Taki’s magazine</a> named Richard Spencer founded AlternativeRight.com.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This latter group understandably feels a great deal of ownership over the term and shares a queasy ambivalence toward Milo Yiannopoulos for having sold a watered-down “<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=alt-lite+alt-right+stormer&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8" style="">alt-lite</a>” to the GOP base. “If Milo tries to hijack the alt-right,” Spencer <a href="https://soundcloud.com/radixjournal/radical-chic" style="">said last month</a>, “then I’m going to definitely start to go after him.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spencer founded AlternativeRight.com, and its successor Radix Journal, to erect a sturdy intellectual scaffold for fascism, designed to rival those found in academia for Marxist thought.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Grounded in cutting-edge racial pseudoscience (as <a href="http://www.radixjournal.com/altright-archive/altright-archive/main/the-magazine/why-an-alternative-right-is-necessary" style="">one of the site’s inaugural essays</a> put it, “we see Western civilization as a unique product of the European gene pool”) AlternativeRight.com hoped to build a community and a school of thought around its core postulates of “race realism” and “human biodiversity.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The site has traced its own ideological historiography to figures like Italian occultist and radical traditionalist <a href="http://www.radixjournal.com/altright-archive/altright-archive/main/the-magazine/the-sexual-aesthetics-and-metaphysics-of-julius-evola" style="">Julius Evola</a>; American lawyer and tireless, globe-trotting advocate for a postwar fascist international, <a href="http://www.radixjournal.com/journal/2015/2/2/emulating-the-tribe" style="">Francis Parker Yockey</a>; and Oswald Spengler, the same German historian who Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels misread and then adopted as an intellectual leading light.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given the matrix of political positions espoused by the site, AlternativeRight.com quickly became a lodestone for many partially overlapping far-right constituencies, ranging from men’s rights activists (natural fans of Evola’s gender essentialism) to the right-wing anticapitalists of European-style Third Positionism (true national socialists in the most literal sense of the term). It has also provided <a href="http://www.radixjournal.com/blog/2016/9/22/esoteric-populism" style="">a platform</a> for <a href="http://www.radixjournal.com/altright-archive/altright-archive/main/blogs/zeitgeist/further-thinking-on-social-class" style="">adherents</a> to the expressly antiegalitarian and antidemocratic “neoreactionary” movement: its philosophical forebear Nick Land <a href="https://theawl.com/the-darkness-before-the-right-84e97225ac19#.10pox3ht6" style="">once described democracy</a> as “not merely doomed” but “doom itself.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Terrifying as this coalition seems, it bears repeating how niche it really is. Their reach in terms of Twitter followers for both Richard Spencer and Radix Journal (about 17,700 and 10,300 respectively) is dwarfed by other prominent figures and movements: DeRay Mckesson (561,000), Free the Nipple (173,000), the ASPCA (340,000), and Dr Steven Greer of the Disclosure Project (47,300), a pressure group seeking government transparency on UFOs, aliens, and free energy technology.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/09/26/these-charts-show-exactly-how-racist-and-radical-the-alt-right-has-gotten-this-year/" style="">otherwise alarmist study</a> by the analytics firm <a href="http://newknowledge.io/" style="">New Knowledge</a> only managed to locate about 27,000 accounts affiliated with the alt-right at all, of which a fractional 3,500–5,225 were espousing violent or otherwise dangerously extremist views. The alt-right is quite literally a political sideshow.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unlike, say, the Chicago school of economics or militant free-market ideologies in general, not a lot of wealthy patrons are paying to develop this crap into an imposing and professionalized system of knowledge. Unlike even the epistemic projects of conservative Christian groups — intelligent design (let’s say) or gay-gene debunking — not even a broad base of grassroots financial support exists.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More debilitating still, a long-term, fundamental incompatibility separates the alt-right’s aspiring intellectuals and the chaotic Internet trolls and hackers with whom they are allied. The faction attempting to present itself in <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/alt-right-makes-its-main-stream-debut" style="">press conferences</a> and <a href="http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2016-08-29/the-rise-of-the-alt-right-movement-and-its-place-in-this-years-presidential-campaign" style="">NPR interviews</a> as a benign advocate for “Western culture” — activists no different from any other ethnic special interest group — cannot productively coexist alongside the faction of faceless terrorists who hacked Leslie Jones’s website and stole her nude photos for the high crime of being an African American woman cast in a Ghostbusters reboot.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And yet, this codependent relationship persists, in part, because social media’s horizontal structure and anonymous forums’ culture of offensive one-upsmanship has proven to be one of the few effective mechanisms for expanding the alt-right’s ideas.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many of the departing old guard from Breitbart News have viewed Yiannopoulos’s and Bannon’s courtship of this radical fringe with alarm and scorn. Former spokesman Kurt Bardella <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/breitbart-staffer-powerhouse-politics-bannon-ran-meetings-sounded/story?id=41493955" style="">told ABC</a> that Bannon ran the site’s editorial meetings like a “white supremacist rally,” and former editor at large Ben Shapiro <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/michelle-fields-ben-shapiro-resign-from-breitbart?utm_term=.ojnN3DdxD#.ylA0Bqpgq" style="">described Bannon</a> as having put “a stake through the heart of Andrew’s legacy.” Last month, Shapiro <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-america-divided/milo-yiannopoulos/" style="">minced no words</a> on Yiannopoulos’s alt-lite apologetics.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If I can’t tell the difference between your ironic tweet and David Duke’s, that’s your fault,” Shapiro said. “He [Yiannopoulos] is not making fun of racism. It’s clown nose on, clown nose off. It’s basic teenage bullshit by someone who is immature.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shapiro’s and Bardella’s confused hair-splitting is understandable, given that the race-baiting rhetoric of Andrew Breitbart’s time was so often couched in a delusional egalitarianism that just happened to also espouse crypto-racist policy positions. <a href="http://www.webcitation.org/5rbhsjhzR" style="">Breitbart’s incompetent piece</a> on Shirley Sherrod, for example, was ostensibly intended to be antiracist, an idiotic attempt to expose privileged government bureaucrats like Sherrod as “the real racists.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the sad reality is that Bannon’s and Yiannopoulos’s crusade is a logical extension of the project that Breitbart himself began with Hollywood Interrupted over a decade ago.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There is a war on. And it is a culture war,” Yiannopoulos <a href="https://youtu.be/VjB0uMQZQ4g?t=1m18s" style="">reminded a whooping RNC crowd</a> at the “Gays for Trump” event last summer.</font></p>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The founder of the site I now work for, Andrew Breitbart, understood instinctively that politics was downstream from culture. He understood that by the time you’re talking about policy and “free trade” and all the rest of it, you’ve already lost the war. Because the war is fought in culture; the war is fought in academia, in the entertainment industry, and in news.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These are institutions in America — supposedly the freest country in the world — that have been completely occupied by the political left.</font></p>

</blockquote>

<p style=" line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px 0px 1.4em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When he was alive, Andrew Breitbart spent an <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/24/rage-machine" style="">inordinate amount of energy</a> fixated on the cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt school — progenitors of the dense critical theories that he struggled with at Tulane — two of whom, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, were German Jewish émigrés who fled Nazi Germany for the sunnier climes of Hollywood.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Yiannopoulos highlighted fascistic pseudo-intellectuals like Julius Evola, Curtis Yarvin, and Nick Land in his “<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/" style="">Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right</a>,” the belated second shoe fell, years after Andrew Breitbart began suggesting that these exiled Weimar intellectuals playing racquetball with exiled German Expressionist filmmakers had super secretly plotted a successful Marxist coup in America’s cultural institutions.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Point being: a conservatism not grounded in either the free-market absolutism of libertarianism or the stodgy moral posturing of evangelicalism has little ideological space left for mooring. Ultimately, Andrew Breitbart’s dimwit Gen-X Archie Bunker-ism was destined to slide either into a begrudging liberal populism or the alt-right’s full-tilt Kulturkampf.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This, in part, explains why the alt-right has been predominantly a meme-based Internet phenomena, strongly associated with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/29/pepe-the-frog-alt-right-mascot-racist-anti-semitic" style="">Pepe the Frog</a>, the ironic use of <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/moon-man" style="">McDonald’s Moon Man</a>, and one caustically offensive <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/the-alt-right-has-its-own-comedy-tv-show-on-a-time-warner-ne?utm_term=.crZN9Zj5Z#.gcZA30l60" style="">Adult Swim</a> show. It explains why Richard Spencer worked so hard to produce an <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/the-alt-right-gives-a-press-conference.html" style="">alt-right logo</a> that resembles Pitchfork Media’s old <a href="http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/Altered_Zones_SXSW_Poster_452.jpg" style="">Altered Zones</a> project. And it perhaps explains why many in the alt-right goon squad sport <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-white-nationalists_us_56dd99c2e4b0ffe6f8e9ee7c" style="">David Lynch haircuts</a> and wear their chill <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/altright/comments/4uz1pd/vaporwave_and_the_altright_a_brief_history/" style="">Vaporwave musical tastes</a> on their sleeve (where the swastika ought to be). They see forwarding their policy goals and the “blunt instrument” of the Trump campaign as secondary to their battle for cultural relevance.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Left shouldn’t worry about this movement’s pitiful attempt to seize the pole position from the American avant-garde. The real danger is that, by raising up the alt-right as not only significant, but emblematic of Trump’s odious constituency, mainstream Democrats only help Bannon and Yiannopoulos provide aspiring demagogues with an bigger platform from which to court disaffected middle-class whites on a national scale.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unable and unwilling to erode Trump’s populist base with meaningful economic reforms, the Democratic Party has resorted to tarring that base as a deplorable, white-nationalist hoard. They hope that the specter of fascism will scare enough decent conservatives away from the party of Trump. But it’s equally possible that this tactic will encourage a redefinition of the still murky alt-right/alt-lite boundary around the broadest possible substrata of the conservative base.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With both Breitbart and the threatened postelection Trump TV, Bannon is certainly poised to expand his army of the aggrieved. He is looking ahead, steely eyed and well prepared, to a dystopian future of massive unemployment and parochial divisiveness, ready to marshal the energies of any and all downwardly mobile American patriots disenfranchised by neoliberalism’s corporate caucus.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Magazine profiles and public-speaking introductions often point out that Bannon dresses down, offering a laconic, El Duderino-vibe behind which runs the machine-tooled brilliance of a military mind.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He was constantly telling stories about great warriors of the past, like Attila the Hun, people who had slain empires,” a former president for Universal Pictures and former business acquaintance <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-stephen-bannon-donald-trump-hollywood-20160830-snap-story.html" style="">once said</a>. “It’s one thing to be interested in the triumphs of military history, it’s another thing to obsess over them. Victory at all costs is a dangerous way to look at the world.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But is that how Bannon views the world?</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/22/steve-bannon-trump-s-top-guy-told-me-he-was-a-leninist.html" style="">Here he is</a> in his own words. “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon boasted. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too.”</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I want to bring everything crashing down.”</font></p>

</header>

</div>

</font><h3><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hurricane Matthew truthers</font></strong></h3>

<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In early October, as Hurricane Matthew approached the southeastern United States and officials ordered mass evacuations,<span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> a group of right-wing commentators alleged that the Obama administration was conspiring to exaggerate hurricane forecasts in order to scare the public about climate change. On Oct. 5, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/10/05/limbaugh-conspiracy-national-hurricane-center-playing-games-hurricane-forecasting-convince-viewers/213557"><b>Rush Limbaugh</b> said</a> hurricane forecasting often involved “politics” because “the National Hurricane Center is part of the National Weather Service, which is part of the Commerce Department, which is part of the Obama administration, which by definition has been tainted.” He added, however, that Matthew itself was “a serious bad storm” and hadn’t been politicized.</span></font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The next day, Matt Drudge took the theory a step further, <a href="http://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/06/matt-drudge-peddles-irresponsible-conspiracy-theory-downplaying-deadly-hurricane-matthew/213599">tweeting</a>, “The deplorables are starting to wonder if govt has been lying to them about Hurricane Matthew intensity to make exaggerated point on climate.” He added, “Hurricane center has monopoly on data. No way of verifying claims.” Drudge’s tweets were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/10/06/drudge-report-posts-infuriating-and-flawed-comments-on-hurricane-matthew/?utm_term=.1ada6215dc87">widely condemned</a> as dangerous and irresponsible. They also caught the attention of conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones:</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A day later, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/10/07/rush-limbaugh-its-inarguable-governments-hyping-hurricane-matthew-sell-climate-change/213613">Limbaugh also went full Matthew Truther</a>, declaring it “inarguable” that the government was “hyping Hurricane Matthew to sell climate change.” Matthew would ultimately kill more than 40 people in the United States and hundreds in Haiti. It caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage.</font></p>

</font></div>

<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/10/20/report-daily-caller-employees-were-embarrassed/183946</font></div>

</font></div>

<div>

<p style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; -webkit-margin-before: 1em; -webkit-margin-after: 1em;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Last month, Daily Caller reporter Matthew Boyle<a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2011/09/27/no-epa-is-not-hiring-230000-workers-to-implemen/182118" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);"> published a story</a> that was basically catnip for the anti-regulation crowd. Citing a court brief from the Environmental Protection Agency, Boyle wrote that the EPA was "asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats -- at a cost of $21 billion -- to attempt to implement" new climate change regulations. Boyle also took to Twitter to broadcast how EPA administrator "LISA JACKSON wants an ARMY OF 230k BUREAUCRATS."</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Predictably, the story got picked up by Fox News, the office of Sen. James Inhofe, and the usual climate-change-denial suspects. Unfortunately for them, Boyle's story was 100% false. Boyle completely misread the court brief, which detailed how the EPA had avoided the scenario he described.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Boyle's misfire was <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/64582.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">widely</a> <a href="http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/09/daily-caller-really-should-be-embarrassed" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">ridiculed</a>, but rather than admit fault and correct the error, the Daily Caller stuck to their guns. Executive editor David Martosko compounded the damage to the publication's credibility by issuing a snide comment to Politico and following that with a <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/09/29/updated-daily-caller-compounds-error-with-bad-r/182971" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">misleading</a> editor's note on the Caller website.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Apparently outside observers weren't the only ones aghast at Daily Caller's complete lack of standards. According to a <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/two-daily-caller-reporters-fired-managing-editor-quits_b53754" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">report</a> this morning by FishbowlDC's Betsy Rothstein, "newsroom sources" at the Caller were dismayed by Martosko's defense of Boyle's "pointedly bogus" story and "feared their reputations would be sullied by the widespread negative attention":</font></p>

<p style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; width: 543px; -webkit-margin-before: 1em; -webkit-margin-after: 1em; margin-top: 0px !important;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Martosko has undoubtedly been a controversial figure from the start. Newsroom sources say his profound defense of reporter <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/Matthew-Boyle-profile.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);"><span style=" box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Matthew Boyle</span></a> and his recent EPA piece troubled reporters who believed the story was false and feared their reputations would be sullied by the widespread negative attention the ordeal received in publications such as Politico and parts of the right-wing media. They couldn't conceive why their editor was defending a story many considered pointedly bogus.</font></p>

</blockquote>

<p style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; -webkit-margin-before: 1em; -webkit-margin-after: 1em;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">I suppose it's slightly reassuring that at least some people at the Caller are capable of acknowledging facts and reality -- too bad their executive editor doesn't seem to be one of them.</font></p>

</div>

<p style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style=" box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">UPDATE (11/18):</span> Politico <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68416.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">reports</a> that the EPA debacle "has raised larger questions" about the "rigor" of Daily Caller's reporting:</font></p>

<p style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; width: 543px; margin-top: 0px !important; margin-bottom: 1em !important;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Five months after Martosko's hiring, that spur-of-the-moment decision is looking less inspired. Martosko's background and approach to the job - particularly his decision to run, and then double down on, an erroneous report that the Environmental Protection Agency was proposing to hire 230,000 new employees - has embarrassed some Daily Caller staffers and contributed to their departures. And it has raised larger questions about whether Carlson is serious about his promise of a publication that may approach stories with a conservative point of view, but is dedicated to reporting them out with the same rigor as the New York Times.</font>

<b><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The EPA story was published in September and ended up as a Drudge-linked and Fox-fueled viral hit cited by members of Congress.</font></b>

<b><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">[A]s the Daily Caller took round after round of fire in the left-leaning blogosphere over the story and Martosko defiantly stood by the story in a subsequent <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/29/editors-notebook-230000-reasons-to-get-an-epa-story-right/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">editor's note</a>, some staffers cringed.</font></b>

<b><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"People were just really embarrassed, and a lot of us were upset with how it was being handled," one former staffer told POLITICO.</font></b></p>

</blockquote>

</div>

</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>