An expert on the influential Drudge Report believes that it “once again” influenced a presidential election, likely steering enough voters to Joe Biden to help make a difference in the outcome.
“Once again, Matt Drudge influenced a national election,” Matthew Lysiak, author of The Drudge Revolution, told Secrets Friday.
“His influence and his relevance remain, and he just flashed that card,” said Lysiak.
The author and newsman said that while the Drudge Report shifted from its pro-Trump posture a couple years into the president’s term, losing many conservative readers, he kept enough of them as he began to favor Biden and mock President Trump.
And what they saw on the site they trusted may have turned them against Trump, who is struggling to ward off a Biden victory.
“This election was won so narrowly that I don’t have any doubt that Matt had an influence in it. Most of the conservatives who loved Matt Drudge left. But I think that there was a small percentage who had doubts about Trump, who had been loyal to Matt for decades, and a small percentage of Drudge readers is thousands and thousands and thousands of readers that I have no doubt that this influenced,” said Lysiak.
“Once again, I really think that Matt had an outsized impact on a national election in America. I don’t think you can argue that point, especially with the outcome and the tight margin,” he added.
While some may shrug off the influence of Drudge’s bare-bones website of headlines pulled from other news sites, Lysiak said that the stories picked and the production of the page have an effect others don’t.
And it is continuing today.
“Look at what Matt’s doing with his website. If you look at it right now, it really creates this narrative that Trump has lost … that Biden’s won, Trump’s unhinged, and it’s extremely effective to the people who click on it 20 times a day,” said Lysiak.
“People, I think, don’t understand what Matt does. People think that Matt just aggregates, but it’s so much more than that. He creates an entire narrative on his page by placing stories the way he does and having the eyeball count that he has,” he added.
While he has no inside information, Lysiak suggested that the political bent of the Drudge Report may veer away from Biden as it seeks more readers.
“Matt is a businessman,” he said, adding, “He wants to stay relevant.” And possibly to do that, said Lysiak, “I assume he will switch back.”
