Tucker Carlson says Matt Drudge now 'firmly a man of the progressive left'

Fox host Tucker Carlson on Friday claimed that Matt Drudge — the longtime one-man media mogul whose Drudge Report has been a mainstay in conservative circles for decades — is now "firmly a man of the progressive left." 

The Drudge Report solidified its place in the national media firmament in 1998 when it broke the story of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, which legacy media outlet Newsweek earlier declined to publish. The website, which since its inception in 1997 has mostly consisted of a simple, text-based design with minimal photographs, has generated immense traffic over the years and has been known as a major driver of clicks to lesser-known media outlets. 

Drudge was known as a fierce advocate and booster of President Trump during the 2016 election and into Trump's first term. Yet the coverage on the site has shifted noticeably since 2019, becoming more hostile to Trump and notably less conservative in its offerings; in recent months the Drudge Report has become a relentless promoter of gloomy COVID-19 news and criticism of Trump's handling of the pandemic. 

Carlson on Friday said that the Drudge Report of late has "changed dramatically, 180 degrees. Matt Drudge is now firmly a man of the progressive left."

"At times, his site is indistinguishable from The Daily Beast or any other woke propaganda outlet posing as a news company," Carlson said. 

The criticism echoes that of Donald Trump, who in April of this year said that he "gave up on Drudge ... long ago," though he said at the time that Drudge himself was "a really nice guy." 

Drudge's changing support for the president reportedly is linked at least in part to Trump's lack of progress on his much-promised border wall, though in a rare interview with the Columbia Journalism Review in January, Drudge declined to say why his feelings on Trump shifted. 

Asked during that interview about his support of Trump in the prior presidential race, he only answered: "That was three years ago."