President Trump blasted The Drudge Report’s Matt Drudge Sunday, saying the right-leaning news aggregator was “no longer ‘hot.’”
“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,” Trump tweeted, linking to a post about Drudge’s traffic on the pro-Trump blog True Pundit.
Although Drudge has long been considered part of the conservative media ecosystem, Trump and several allies have turned on the site in recent months.
Earlier in September, Trump blasted Drudge as biased against him on Twitter after the website led with Trump’s denial that he had been hospitalized with a series of “mini-strokes.”
“Drudge didn’t support me in 2016, and I hear he doesn’t support me now. Maybe that’s why he is doing poorly. His Fake News report on Mini-Strokes is incorrect. Possibly thinking about himself, or the other party’s ‘candidate,'” Trump wrote on Sept. 1.
In late July, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, whose show the president is known to watch closely, claimed Drudge was “now firmly a man of the progressive left.” In April, Trump tweeted that Drudge was “a really nice guy” but that he “gave up on Drudge … long ago.”