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Matt Drudgeplayed a pivotal role in the scandal that engulfedBill Clinton’s administration (and the country) in 1998 — breaking the story of an affair withMonica Lewinskythat would nearly take down the president.
But before Drudge was an influential conservative media personality and Internet publisher, he was managing the gift shop at CBS Studios in Los Angeles, emailing bits of Hollywood insider gossip to friends.
His information,he later said, came from “scoops from the sound stages I had heard” and his “friends” in politics.
(Drudge dedicated that book, coincidentally, toLinda Tripp, the former White House and Pentagon staffer who secretly recorded her phone calls with Lewinsky and ultimately turned them over to an independent counsel.)
His subscription base grew after he published a story thatJerry Seinfeldwas seeking $1 million per episode of his hit sitcom. That led to new opportunities — in 1996,asNew Yorkmagazine previously reported, Drudge got a job writing forWiredand, later, for America Online.
Drudge ran his article aboutNewsweekon Jan. 17, 1998. A day later, he published a follow-up, this time with Lewinsky’s name.
The story wenteverywhere, making Lewinsky a household name nearly overnight and further fueling the investigation that led to Clinton’s impeachment in the House of Representatives. It also led to years of high traffic to Drudge’s website and years of fame and notoriety for Drudge himself, a political outsider who had somehow landed the biggest story in all of politics.
Billy Eichner as Matt Drudge in Impeachment: American Crime Story.Tina Thorpe/FX
Drudge’s Hollywood portrayal traces back to the attention from his bombshell Lewinsky report, which landed him spots on radio (he previously had his own show and would occasionally guest-host for the late conservative icon Rush Limbaugh) as well as an eponymous show on Fox News.
The Fox program would be short-lived, running from June 1998 to November 1999, and ending when Drudge and the network got into a disagreement about a segment on abortion.
Still a frequently-updated site, the Drudge Report’s website design remains simplistic: nothing more than series of black and white headlines and a few color photos along with Drudge-written commentary and headlines.
But the site’s influence on media can’t be understated, as it ushered in a new era and style of reporting. And years later, it still remains a go-to aggregator for figures in politics and media because a reference or link on Drudge’s website still drives notable readers (even if those figures have softened).
The site set the tone for conservative media in other ways, as well. One of Drudge’s early employees, Andrew Breitbart, went on to found the far-right website Breitbart News before hedied in 2012.
Drudge is now 54 years old and has never offered up his Clinton-Lewinsky source or explained how he found out about the affair.
He rarely speaks to media outlets at all and has grown more and more reclusive. In the past, though, he has been forthcoming when speaking about his website’s success, tellingThe Miami Heraldin 2003 that he estimated his annual earnings at roughly $1.2 million a year.
In 2007,New Yorkattempted to track down the conservative journalist, who decamped from Hollywood to Florida in 2001 (both, the magazine reported, due to the lower tax rate and the privacy that could be found outside of California).
Though the magazine was never able to interview Drudge for its 2007 profile,he did email them a denialabout rumors over his personal life whenOut, a prominent LGBTQ magazine, said that he was gay. He has repeatedly denied this.
Years later, he gave a rare interview to controversial far-rightradio host Alex Jones in 2015, during which he spoke about how his Drudge Report has maintained its ethos, while the media landscape has changed around it.
“Drudge, to me, when I look at it right now is a correction to this groupthink,” he told Jones. “There’s no difference from any of these websites. You go up and down — we talk about this — what’s the difference between the websites? Between a Slate or a Salon or a BuzzFeed or a HuffPo — what is the difference? There isn’t any! And this is travesty. It’s almost like a weird conglomerate of groupthink that has developed in a dynamic era that should be vibrating.”
Drudge’s right-wing critics disagree. They take particular issue with what they call his opposition toDonald Trump.
In 2020, Fox News hostTucker Carlson slammed Drudge, saying he had become “a man of the progressive left.”
“But if you’ve seen the Drudge Report recently, you know that it has changed dramatically, 180 degrees,” Carlson said. “Matt Drudge is now firmly a man of the progressive left. At times, his site is indistinguishable from The Daily Beast or any other woke propaganda outlet posing as a news company.”
PEOPLE’s requests for comment on Drudge’s role in the unraveling of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal — and his take on his portrayal in the show — were, predictably, not returned.
source: people.com
