Matt Drudge, the founder of the top conservative news aggregation website Drudge Report, made a rare statement to push back on President Trump’s claim that the website’s traffic has plummeted.
“The past 30 days has been the most eyeballs in Drudge Report‘s 26 year-history,” Drudge said in an email to CNN on Saturday. “Heartbreaking that it has been under such tragic circumstances.”
Drudge was supportive of Trump’s 2016 presidential run but has increasingly posted more negative news about him in the past year. A person close to Drudge told CNN in October that he had become frustrated with the president.
Earlier Saturday, Trump said he had given up on Drudge and retweeted criticism of him.
“I gave up on Drudge (a really nice guy) long ago, as have many others. People are dropping off like flies!” Trump wrote.
Trump did not give any evidence to support his claim.
I gave up on Drudge (a really nice guy) long ago, as have many others. People are dropping off like flies! https://t.co/L77SXS2mE8
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2020
Data from Drudge’s server, provided to CNN, showed a big traffic bump in March, rising to 1.2 billion page views from 781 million page views in February.
