Deep, deep in the Drudge Report Archives, you'll find a secret.
If you return to the Drudge Report on January 5, 2021 at Noon, these writers, in the center column, were the reference points of the day:
Rush Limbaugh is the separating point, I couldn't fit all the names on one screen shot.
What's the significance of Noon on January 5? It was one day before the Capitol Riots, or as CNN would call it, the Capitol Insurgency.
One year later, CNN, continually and loudly, beats on the drum that there has to be consequences for the actions of the Right in relation to what happened at the Capitol.
Matt Drudge has quietly inflicted ramifications on the Right.
If you go to the Drudge Report today, you'll notice a lot of names have disappeared in the last year. The most noticeable name is Rush Limbaugh. Rush died in February of 2021, but I always assumed that rushlimbaugh.com would stay on Drudge forever, like a legacy account. Many considered Limbaugh paramount to Drudge's success. I personally learned about the Drudge Report from Rush Limbaugh.
But if you look closely at the complete list of names that were removed, they seem to have something in common:
Fred Barnes
Michael Barone
Paul Bedard
George Conway
Lloyd Grove
Maggie Haberman
Hannity
Hugh Hewitt
Laura Ingraham
Alex Jones
Keith Kelly
Kristof
Mark Levin
David Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh
Michele Malkin
Mish Talk
Bill Press
Walter Williams
Now Walter Williams passed away only days before the Capitol Riot, when I went to his page,
it's there, but it's not really active. But other than R. Limbaugh and Williams, I see a lot of LIVING voices on the right that made a lot of noise about how they thought Trump Won.
Those purged from the Right are highlighted in bright Red. Those removed from the Left are highlighted in bright Blue. Those I weren't familiar with or couldn't assign a wing to by a cursory search were left in plain font.
Now all websites update their links, so I'm sure that some were dropped from Drudge due to normal website housecleaning. But let me state a fact for you: Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election. Those who believe Trump won also believe in fairies and magic elves. Trump winning was not rooted in any journalistic facts, simply a belief that their preferred candidate won. I speculate (Matt Drudge ain't talkin' to me) that if you go by the list above, and circumstantial evidence, that the Drudge Report removed, at least, half the list of names above because they were "Trump Truthers."
Hey Alex Jones and Mark Levin, you lost millions of website views because you were stupid. How does that taste?
Also curious were the names that the Drudge Report added in the last year:
Gerald Baker
Maureen Callahan
S.E. Cupp
Miranda Devine
Michael Fleming
Michael Goodwin
Charles Hurt
Candace Owens
Bill O'Reilly
Joe Rogan
Ben Smith
Kyle Smith
Snowden
Matt Taibbi
S.E. Cupp is a partisan hack for the Left.
Candace Owens is a partisan hack for the Right.
Joe Rogan is nothing but a populist.
Yes, Snowden is that Edward Snowden.
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi? Intriguing.
So Matt Drudge dumped a bunch of Trump Truthers for a cross-section of voices?
That's just plain smart business. As most left wing websites are lurching farther to the left, and most right wing websites are moving farther to the right, staking out the middle ground is a sound growth strategy for an underrepresented portion of the population.
This is not the first time we've noticed this trend: The Drudge Report is Quietly Nudging Toward the Middle.