In a turn unimaginable a couple years ago — and still rather dumbfounding to me — noise-machinist Matt Drudge has soared from eminent Trumpeteer to NeverAgainTrumper. Of this, I was unaware until yesterday. Drudge is one of the many politically theocratic fanatics I haven't kept tabs on, since, to borrow from Tomlin, no matter how assiduous I become in following right-wing crackpots, it's never enough to keep up.
At any rate, yesterday afternoon I was reading an unmemorable piece about something or other when a link to this contemporaneous Drudge page (once, and perhaps still, the bible of crackpots) sprang up, and I clicked:
That was intriguing. So I Googled "What's up with Drudge?" and got this, from the Columbia Journalism Review: "Why did Matt Drudge turn on Donald Trump?" by Bob Norman, January 2020. There I found that "cracks began emerging in Drudge’s devotion two years into Trump’s term, with the president’s inability to get full funding for the border wall." Indeed Drudge became irate that America had "no new wall at all!"
Once turned, Drudge couldn't stop. In the summer of 2019 he complained of "big government" Trump; of the president's "trash talk" and its alienating effect on suburban women; of hard-pressed farmers and disastrous trade wars. With impeachment came "loaded headlines" like this, noted Norman: "Republican criticism [of Trump] mounts …"; "It took [a] long time for Republicans to abandon Nixon …"; and “Senate likelier to remove [Trump] …"
Around the time of these headlines, Norman managed to reach the reclusive Drudge by phone at his $2.2 million Florida home. He inquired as to the provocateur's Trumpian apostasy on the heels of such supportive fervency: "That was three years ago," said Drudge. "[He] wouldn’t go further," wrote Norman.
In 2015, Matt Drudge said to friend Alex Jones on InfoWars: "I live in a world that is free, colorful, vibrant, takes chances, bold, stands up to power. And that’s where I’ve made my success."
Again I'm intrigued. Is Drudge — whose readership numbers have rebounded since first filleting Trump — a kind of one-man vanguard in readying today's pseudoconservatives for a recovering, post-Trump era? Has Drudge envisioned a colossal Trumpian train wreck on a Big 2020 Blue Wall? Can Drudge restore the internally demolished credibility of the right-winningest NeverTrumpers? Can that be where Drudge makes his next success?