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How the Drudge Report ushered in the age of Trump

Twenty years ago, Matt Drudge’s reports on the Lewinsky affair nearly brought down Bill Clinton. He was seen as the wellspring of a new, hyper-aggressive American conservatism – but has he been outflanked by his imitators?

A t precisely 9.32pm and two seconds by his Californian clock, Matt Drudge hit the send button on his home computer and changed the world. It was Saturday 17 January 1998, beyond midnight in Washington where President Clinton had no idea what was about to hit him.

“NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN; BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT”

The headline was posted in such small print that, were it not for the capital letters, a reader might have mistaken it for a dispatch on corn prices rather than an avalanche that would propel Bill Clinton all the way to impeachment. But then, Drudge never has run with the typographical crowd.

Two hours later, he followed up with a longer post in which he elaborated that Newsweek had spiked a story from its then investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Had it been published, Drudge said, the story would have revealed that a young, still anonymous female intern had been a “frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office” where she developed a sexual relationship with the president.

The next day the Drudge Report published her name: Monica Lewinsky.

The storm unleashed that Saturday night was all the more potent for coming from a single individual operating out of a one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood where he lived with a cat named Cat, three TVs, three computers, a satellite dish and a police scanner. Not long before, he had been selling T-shirts in a gift shop at CBS Studios .

Twenty years later, we can now see that Drudge, 51, sparked a revolution – a double one at that. Politically, his Lewinsky scoops heralded a new kind of American conservatism that was devil-may-care, iconoclastic, hyper-aggressive and populist. If that sounds familiar, given the fireworks bursting daily out of today’s White House, then that is no coincidence.

“Looking back, he was the beginning of a cultural revolution which we are still in the midst of right now,” says David Horowitz, a conservative writer who helped to bail out Drudge shortly before the Lewinsky affair broke. At the time Drudge was fighting a $30m lawsuit against the Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, whom he had falsely accused of abusing his wife – one of the earliest examples in the internet age of rightwing fake news.

The second revolution Drudge sparked was within the media. By exposing not just the president’s tryst with an intern, but the decision by Newsweek to hold off on the story, he planted a bomb under both the presidency and the mainstream media. “Matt Drudge broke the fraternity of the guardians of the culture,” Horowitz says.

The “fraternity” was aghast at Drudge’s rise. CBS’s Face the Nation refused to sully itself by having Drudge on air. When NBC did extend an invitation, Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, scoffed: “The notion of a cyber gossip sitting on Meet the Press would have been unthinkable!” Drudge lapped up the opprobrium, trolling his critics with the comment: “I’m not a journalist, I’m a kangaroo.”

Despite the brickbats, Drudge rapidly attracted a large readership with his gregarious mix of aggregated Beltway and Hollywood gossip, news stories drawn from outlets spanning the political range, and headlines that were clickbait before the term had been coined. “There’s a new sex droid in town”, was one of his recent headlines.

Where readers flocked, news editors followed with tails between legs. A skim of the Drudge headlines became an essential start to any TV, press or radio editors’ day, helping to define what was shaping up to be the 24-hour news cycle. And with no legacy overheads and a lean staff, Drudge was soon raking in the money, the proceeds of which he enjoys today in his 10-acre property outside Miami where he moved in the wake of the Lewinsky furore.

While the readership has always leaned heavily male and conservative, his devoted fans include unexpected figures, such as feminist intellectual Camille Paglia. She was one of the first established voices to break ranks and endorse the site at a time when it was still being almost universally derided.

“I saw in Matt Drudge the triumph of the populist tabloids,” says Paglia. “It’s amazing how no one, in all these decades, has been able to imitate, displace, or supplant Drudge – because he is a true American original.”

Paglia is right: it is amazing that the Drudge Report continues to enjoy the influence it does. The point-size of its banner headline has crept up a bit, but otherwise the layout of the site is virtually unchanged from the original design, as though it were stuck in time.

According to analytics company comScore, the Drudge Report had 2.5 million unique visitors in November. That reach is amplified when you consider the strong engagement of readers who tend to return frequently, producing a total 292m page views that month.

While the Drudge Report is a rightwing site true to the libertarian, small government, anti-abortion , climate change-denying world view of its creator, its impact is felt much more widely. When the Guardian – not a natural Drudge ally – broke the story of Steve Bannon’s incendiary remarks in Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury this month, fully a quarter of the vast traffic it generated came through Drudge.

Over the past 20 years, the rightwing megaphone has grown far more sophisticated. Savage Nation (1994), Fox News (1996), InfoWars (1999) and Breitbart (2005) – which was started by Drudge’s first assistant, Andrew Breitbart – have all matured in line with the Drudge Report (1995). But instead of threatening his supremacy, they have provided political ballast to his idiosyncrasies.

Drudge is “the wellspring for the conservative media ecosystem”, wrote the Republican strategist Rick Wilson in the Daily Beast .

The threat to the Drudge Report has come, paradoxically, not so much from rightwing competitors but from the very source of his own success – individualised news born of the internet. When he sent out his first newsletter via email to friends, he issued a genuinely personal take on current affairs, an independent act of defiance that appealed to his libertarian values.

That act has spawned countless imitators, but instead of being truly individualised, they are corralled through the modern monoliths Facebook and Twitter. The development has left Drudge baffled and bemused, judging from recent remarks of this increasingly reclusive man.

In October 2015, Drudge, who now rarely allows himself to be seen or heard in public and who did not respond to a Guardian request for interview, turned up unexpectedly in the Austin, Texas studios of Alex Jones’s InfoWars. He remained unseen and behind camera, but did speak passionately for several minutes.

“Twenty years. I’ve had a hell of a run,” Drudge said to Jones from the shadows, clearly feeling nostalgic. Then he got down to business.

“I don’t do the socials,” he said with a telling linguistic awkwardness. “I’m not on Facebook. I’ve got the Twitter thing, but even that’s disgusting.”

The shift has been stealthy but seismic. The Drudge Report’s legendary ability to dictate the news cycle has been stolen by Twitter, where editors – instead of having to rely on Drudge’s judgment – can exercise their own. “You used to see something go up on Drudge and hear it on cable news an hour later – now it’s all moved over to the Twittersphere,” Wilson says.

That trend was temporarily abated during 2016 when the site enjoyed a revival as cheerleader-in-chief for Donald Trump. As Politico put it, Drudge went “all in on Trump”. He reserved his banner headlines for Trump-friendly subjects such as immigration and trade, while running attack stories on contesting Republican candidates such as Ted Cruz . After Trump won his party’s nomination, Drudge provided the same service in the general election, mocking Hillary Clinton as a “brain in a jar” and accusing the rest of the media of covering-up her hypothyroidism .

Much as a Trump victory was palpably desired by Drudge, you have to wonder whether he will come to regret the outcome, in the manner of Frankenstein and his monster.

Dylan Byers, CNN’s senior reporter on media and politics, points out that, by giving Trump a leg-up into the White House, he has helped to create a media phenomenon that is far more powerful than any Drudge Report. “For 20 years, Drudge set the gold standard for gossip, sensationalism and trolling, making him one of the most influential figures in political media,” Byers says. “But Trump is sui generis. He is his own media outlet. He does his own trolling and creates his own sensationalism. The controversies Trump creates with one tweet make Drudge’s entire homepage feel uninspired.”

Uninspired. That’s a word seldom attached to Matt Drudge. But nothing is safe in the Trump era, it seems. Not even the wellspring of conservative media.

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Welcome to the all new version 7 of the one and only official Drudge Report app. Here's all you need to know to use the app to it's fullest: *** NOTIFICATIONS *** On first open, iOS will ask you to allow notifications. Tapping "Allow" results in alerts being sent to your phone whenever there is a siren, new banner or a highlighted headline (e.g. colored red.) Review these urgent headlines anytime by tapping on the urgent headlines button (bell with lines under it.) Then to modify which alerts you receive by tapping on the settings (gear) icon. *** SCROLL TO TOP *** Tap on the reload button. *** COLUMN SWITCHING (phones) *** Tap on the columns icon once to be taken to the top of the first column. Tap again for the top of the second column. Tap for the third column. Tap one more time and you'll be brought to the top. Repeat as desired. A personal response for those who email in bug reports or suggestions for improvement. Posting bugs in the comments may not get the attention they deserve. [email protected]

Version 7.0.3

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Ratings and Reviews

Functionality review.

The app is fairly rudimentary, as the site is. But it has some functionality issues. There are times where having the application open will pause background music/podcasts and you have to restart your music and close the app. That could be fixed. The “alerts” or “breaking news” pings are absolutely dumb in the way they work. There’s also a cache issue with photos that were on the page associated with links - you can see as you’re scrolling the images get replaced. Old images remain cached and aren’t properly replaced or cleared in a timely fashion upon opening the app again. Overall, Matt Drudge (if he even runs the site anymore) should be ashamed that this application runs so poorly. It’s not hard to find a company who could make an iOS app better than this. Even if it’s a simple site, the application should work properly as such.

Discovered Drudge sold this to the liberal Otto family under condition of secrecy

I know that Matt drudge had a falling out with Trump in 2018 and I thought that was the reason for the one sided stories against him, but As the articles on this website become more and more one-sided and selective, for example, the betting odds, they only reported on the one outdated betting and said that Biden now overwhelmingly favored to beat Trump when all of the other betting I’d say that Trump is favored, I decided to investigate myself and found that Matt drudge sold this website to the liberal anti trump Otto family under condition of secrecy that he never disclosed it was sold to them. Basically so that they can be fraudulent. They can pretend like it’s a conservative website saying negative things about Trump and about conservative so it looks like they have more credibility so people will think a conservative website is saying it. I think that’s really sad that this is the Otto families life work, tricking people. Stand up for what you believe. No matter what side you’re on. And make a difference that way. They use the same tactics they accuse trump of. They’re frauds.

No longer relevant

Drudge Report used to be a decent (a term I will use loosely) fairly unbiased new reporting source. Fast forward 5 years later and it’s become nothing but a propaganda based, over the top leftist shell of its former self. When you are constantly posting stories from Yahoo, you know that a company has truly hit Rockbottom. Some of the absolutely worst “news” website used as links on the DrudgeReport page, have made in an irrelevant source for any reliable news. But hey, if you like senseless gossip sites like the Dailymail UK, TMZ, andthe National Enquirer, then you’ve come to the right place. Read, be angry and be stupid.

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Did Drudge Report and Fox News turn blue in 2020?

Once seen as staunchly republican, the news site and cable news network raised eyebrows in their coverage of trump.

By Jennifer Graham

Once a reliable place to find unflattering photos of Hillary Clinton, the news aggregator Drudge Report mocked both President Donald Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani in recent weeks.

Meanwhile Fox News, long seen as a booster of conservatism, has become a target of the president, who cheers every decline in ratings and is rumored to be considering starting a media company that would compete with Fox.

Have Drudge and Fox, like voters in Georgia, turned blue, or at least faint purple?

If so, it would be a remarkable change, given that a subset of Americans called “ Fox News Republicans ” have been the president’s most loyal supporters. And as far back as 2006, the website founded by Matt Drudge has been seen as powerhouse of Republican support, with ABC News reporting that year that “Drudge Report sets the tone for national political coverage.”

It’s clear that Drudge Report is no longer a booster of Trump, who has called the website “fake news” this year although it has been credited with helping him get elected in 2016.

It’s not clear, however, if Matt Drudge is still the owner, or involved on a daily basis. There’s been speculation the site has been sold, although others say Drudge still owns and manages the site he founded in 1995.

As for Fox, the network recently changed its slogan to “ Standing Up for What’s Right ,” which some people saw as a dig at Trump, and by extension, his loyal supporters. Trump voters also took issue with the network calling states for Biden on election night.

Given their other content, it’s unlikely that Drudge Report and Fox have radically shifted to the left. As they say in medical school, “ when you hear hoofs, think horse, not zebra ,” meaning the simplest explanation is more likely than the more uncommon one.

As such, it’s more probable that the news outlets soured on Trump — as some other prominent Republicans did — not on conservatism in general.

But the perception that Drudge Report and Fox News have abandoned their base is getting oxygen from people who want to compete with them.

Drudge Report, a former Trump ally, is ready to move on. The site is filled with headlines that describe the outgoing president as "bitter" and "not a good loser.'" https://t.co/VSoJyMzWgN pic.twitter.com/SKBfNlq43H — Nieman Lab (@NiemanLab) November 12, 2020

Man of the Left?

Earlier this year, Ryan McMaken, writing on the blog of the Mises Institute , said Drudge Report has lost its edge, becoming instead a purveyor of predictable fare, spiced with “crisis porn.”

“It is now, for all practical purposes, a sister site to CNN.com or The Atlantic, ” McMaken wrote.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson went farther, in July calling Drudge “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 told Matthew Lysiak, the author of a biography on Drudge, “ The Drudge Revolution ,” released this year.

Lysiak did not interview the subject of his book. Drudge is famously reclusive and rarely grants interviews. But he did speak briefly to Florida journalist Bob Norman after he showed up unannounced at Drudge’s home.

As Norman recounted in an article in Columbia Journalism Review, he never saw Drudge when he was at the house, but called him later and told him he wanted to talk with him about Trump. “You and everybody else,” Drudge replied. When Norman said Drudge Report was supportive of Trump in 2016, Drudge said, “That was three years ago.”

“That response seemed rather telling, a clear distancing from the president. But Drudge wouldn’t go further,” Norman wrote.

In addition to Drudge Report’s increasingly frequent skewering of Trump, others have noticed the website has taken the pandemic seriously, unlike some of Trump’s supporters.

As one person wrote on Twitter, “Fox may have shifted to the center since 2016. Drudge Report was the biggest game changer. DR single-handedly made me deathly afraid of COVID-19 between February and May of this year.”

Fox News, meanwhile, has regularly enraged the president with reporting that the president believes is biased against him. At one point, he said he was the “golden goose” responsible for the network’s historic ratings. (Fox surpassed the legacy networks in primetime for the third quarter of 2020, and in that same quarter, four of the five most-watched cable news shows belonged to Fox.)

And his anger was renewed on election night after Fox News was the first network to project that eventual President-elect Joe Biden would win Arizona.

According to the political website The Hill , the Trump campaign urged people to call Fox to ask them to withdraw the call. “The campaign also sent out talking points attacking the head of the Fox News decision desk and highlighting his past contributions to Democratic candidates,” Brett Samuels wrote for The Hill.

The president has urged his supporters to abandon Fox for other conservative outlets such as Newmax, and Mike Allen at Axios has reported that Trump wants to start a digital media company to compete with Fox. According to Allen, an unidentified source said, “He plans to wreck Fox. No doubt about it.”

To do so, however, would require convincing Trump supporters to abandon their principle source of news.

According to an October report from the Public Religion Research Institute, about 40% of Republicans say they trust Fox News more than any other news source, comprising what the institute’s founder and CEO Robert P. Jones called “a party within a party.”

And those “Fox New Republicans” were largely supportive of the president.

Nearly all Republicans who report trusting most in Fox News for television news approved of the job Trump is doing in office, including 82% who strongly approve, according to the PRRI survey. (Among all other Republicans, 78% approved of the president and 42% strongly approved.)

Drudge alternative

If Trump decides to compete with what he perceives as anti-Trump media, he’ll have company. Conservative podcaster Dan Bongino is offering Trump supporters an alternative to Drudge Report in his Bongino Report , launched last year.

A news aggregator like Drudge Report, the site recently had headlines including “Biden Campaign Manager Called for Mandatory Gun Seizures” and “RINO Mitt Romney Scolds Trump for Not Accepting Election Irregularities Without Investigation.”

In announcing the launch, Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and police officer, said on Twitter, “Drudge has abandoned you. I NEVER will.”

Bongino is regularly among the top 10 performing Facebook posts on a given day, according to the Twitter account that tracks them. He’s also a regular commentator on Fox News, which shows the challenge that Trump and his supporters face if they try to extract themselves from Fox and Drudge Report, given their longtime entwinement. When Trump criticizes Fox, for example, he’s criticizing the employer of his ally Sean Hannity, a top-performing Fox host.

But a Biden presidency may be what reunites the team. Recently, Drudge Report has been publishing flattering photos of Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. If the past predicts the future, that will change.

And a recent article by Sarah Ellison and Jeremy Barr in The Washington Post suggests that Fox News will soon be making Trump happy again when it casts a critical eye on the Biden administration.

“Fox thrives when it is in the opposition because they have a real-time bad guy to beat up on,” former CNN President Jonathan Klein said in the Post. “A Biden win would be great for Fox’s business.”

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Matt Drudge Finally Sells His Miami Home for $1.6M, a Much Lower Price Than Planned

Here’s a scoop: Matt Drudge , creator of the Drudge Report, has finally snagged a buyer for his Miami  home.

In September of last year, Drudge listed his five-bedroom, 4.5-bath property for just a tiny bit under $3 million. In January, he slashed the price to $2,499,500, then $1,995,000, and eventually $1,895,000.

The final sale price was $1.6 million, which is a tad more than the $1,450,000 he paid for the place in 2011.

(Realtor.com)

According to the listing, Drudge was “motivated” to sell this house, which is all but hidden down a long gated driveway and among so many trees and plants. It’s “unseen from air and street.”

Set on over 4 acres, the 6,700-square-foot home features travertine and hardwood on the floor and commercial-grade appliances in the kitchen.

There’s a library and seating area upstairs, and the layout includes a large family room with plenty of plush seating.

The second floor boasts balconies, and the primary bathroom features a Jacuzzi tub.

Outside, the pool and pool deck are conveniently covered, and there’s a gazebo.

The Drudge Report , a conservative news and commentary aggregate site, was founded in 1995 and continues to publish to this day.

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Can Matt Drudge Survive Without the MAGA Faithful?

By Caleb Ecarma

Matt Drudge, the mysterious media maven, conservative kingmaker, and arguably the most influential news aggregator in history, has officially found himself on Donald Trump ’s “no longer hot” list. It’s a club that includes just one other member: Vanity Fair, whose Oscar party the president declared “no longer ‘hot’” before he took office. For someone who repeats insults reflexively—“like a dog” and “choked” and “low energy” being prime examples—this shows remarkable restraint. It’s a safe bet, then, that this specific insult is reserved for those toward which Trump feels complete and utter disdain.

Matt Drudge has earned his place on the president’s hit list. He was a key player in helping the president win the 2016 Republican primary, and thus the presidency, and visited the White House early on—Trump once called him a “great gentleman” and treated his headlines like gospel. Why the fall from grace? The answer is fairly straightforward: In Trump’s simple mind, those who exclusively praise him are good, and those who don’t are bad, no matter their shared history. Drudge was one of the earliest major media figures to champion then candidate Trump in 2015 and acted as a de facto publicist on behalf of the campaign, according to former Trump campaign adviser Sam Nunberg, a claim he made in Matthew Lysiak ’s biography The Drudge Revolution. However, last summer, cracks began to show in their symbiotic relationship as the Drudge Report’s top headline blared, “No New Wall At All!” The aggregation site, which regularly drives hundreds of millions of page views every month, hasn’t let up on the president since, following its initial shot with a jab over the expansion of big government policies “On Trump Watch”; a line on how Trump’s “trash talk” has hurt his favorability among suburban women; and a warning from farmers that the president's trade wars are “ruining our markets.”

By late 2019, Drudge’s relatively nuanced, policy-based scrutiny of Trump had bloomed into him seemingly hopping on the pro-impeachment bandwagon. As the White House’s Ukraine scandal dragged on last fall, the Drudge Report’s headlines began to read like HuffPost, rather than a publication routinely read on air by conservative talk-radio hosts; selections included “Republican criticism [of Trump] mounts,” “Senate likelier to remove,” “Trump on Brink,” and one that simply juxtaposed the word “Swamped” with a strategically chosen photo of the president looking deflated.

The president returned fire in April when Drudge ran a headline that read “NO PEAK YET,” warning of the impending body count caused by coronavirus. “I gave up on Drudge (a really nice guy) long ago, as have many others,” Trump tweeted . He also retweeted a post accusing Drudge of sensationalizing and spreading lies about the pandemic. And he concluded the series by claiming that the Drudge Report’s readership is dwindling by the day: “People are dropping off like flies!” For the fedora-wearing recluse, who is rarely seen outside his South Florida compound, much less driven to make a public comment of any kind, it was apparently a bridge too far. “The past 30 days has been the most eyeballs in Drudge Report's 26 year-history,” Drudge wrote in an emailed statement to CNN. “Heartbreaking that it has been under such tragic circumstances.”

The conflict escalated again this month, when a particularly aggressive Drudge headline noted Trump’s denial that a “Mini-Stroke Sent Him to Hospital,” complete with a beautifully clickable kicker: “VIDEO: [Trump] Dragging Right Leg.” This was apparently the final straw for Trump, who decided it was time for no more Mr. “really nice guy.” He responded by insisting that Drudge did not support him in 2016 and “doesn’t support me now. Maybe that’s why he is doing poorly. His Fake News report on Mini-Strokes is incorrect.” Trump then posited that Drudge is “Possibly thinking about himself, or the other party’s ‘candidate,’” referencing his claims about Joe Biden ’s diminishing mental state. Curiously, Drudge has not pushed the theory that Biden is losing it, despite most conservative outlets obsessing over the Democratic nominee’s supposed cognitive decline. His decision to opt out is particularly notable given that, in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, his site aided in spreading conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton ’s supposedly failing health.

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By Bess Levin

The president has continued to batter his old friend this week, tweeting on Sunday that Drudge’s site “is down 40% plus since he became Fake News. Most importantly, he’s bleeding profusely, and is no longer ‘hot.’ But others are!” In a Monday tweet, he claimed, “Our people have all left Drudge,” and tagged the site’s namesake to call him “a confused MESS, has no clue what happened. Down 51%.” He finished his tantrum by promoting a new Drudge Report competitor, writing that his supporters are now reading sites “like REVOLVER.” Launched over the summer, just months after the president first began attacking Drudge, Revolver News is a conservative aggregation website that caters to ardent Trump supporters and coronavirus skeptics with headlines like: “COVID-19 Lockdowns Over 10 Times More Deadly Than Pandemic Itself.” Its notable readers thus far include Rep. Paul Gosar , an Arizona Republican who pushed an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, and Michelle Malkin, a right-wing commentator who recently hailed a white nationalist figure as one of the “New Right leaders.” Darren J. Beattie, an ex–White House speechwriter who left his Trump appointment in 2018 after it was revealed that he spoke at a conference attended by white nationalists, works for Revolver News—and appeared Tuesday night on Tucker Carlson ’s Fox News show.

In lockstep with the president, Carlson also pronounced Revolver News “effectively the new Drudge Report, since the actual Drudge Report went completely insane,” and claimed “many of Drudge’s longtime readers have fled to Revolver News…to fill the void.” During a July segment on “what happened to Matt Drudge,” Carlson wrote him off as “now firmly a man of the progressive left,” saying that “at times his site is indistinguishable from the Daily Beast or any other woke propaganda outlet.” (Drudge seemingly fired back at the host’s insults on Wednesday by featuring a headline on Fox’s hair and makeup department layoffs alongside a photo of Carlson looking stupefied under his signature Waspy bangs.)

Carlson isn’t the only member of right-wing media royalty to shun the man they once obsessively turned to for their daily news diet. In August, Rush Limbaugh heavily implied that Drudge crossed Trump not for ideological reasons, but for the money. “My email inbox every day, ‘What’s happening to Drudge, Rush?’And I tell people, ‘Have you heard of clicks?’” said the conservative talk-radio giant.

Limbaugh’s less-popular counterpart Mark Levin made similar accusations last week after Drudge heavily promoted Bob Woodward ’s new book, which revealed that Trump acknowledged the deadly nature of coronavirus in February while lying to the public by likening it to a common flu. “What’s this, the 5th or 6th book in recent weeks pushed by Drudge and the media and intended to elect Biden and smear Trump?” Levin tweeted. “Drudge sells out to big media, betrays conservatives who made his site popular. Hawking 60 Minutes and Woodward. There’s no longer any reason for the existence of that website,” he added on Sunday. It appears the Drudge splash that teed off Levin’s explosion was a headline that described Woodward’s book, Rage, as a “Brutal Look Inside White House Chaos” and promoted an excerpt about Trump’s “COVID Cover-Up” bombshell.

Ironically, in one of Drudge’s last media appearances, he spoke to Alex Jones in his Austin studio—but true to form, he remained off-camera and did the entire interview from "literally in the shadows, behind a curtain”—and told the Infowars founder, “You’re not alone. Limbaugh, [Michael] Savage, [Sean] Hannity, Levin…. I’m friends with all of them.”

Counter to his peers’ claims that his anti-Trump pivot is a self-interested move, Drudge’s traffic has gone down significantly in the past year. TheRighting, a site dedicated to analyzing and tracking the popularity of top conservative media outlets, reported that the Drudge Report has experienced a 38% decline from its almost 2.4 million unique visits in July 2019, to less than 1.5 million unique visitors in July of this year.

The site’s explicit defiance toward Trump and his administration, and the president’s rebukes in turn, are almost certainly a contributing factor in this downward trend. But another recent massive change to the conservative media landscape might also have a hand in Drudge’s decreasing readership. There is now a sizable portion of the GOP base that has swallowed the mind-altering QAnon conspiracy theory, meaning that relatively mainstream conservative sites like the Drudge Report just don’t give them the same high that was once sufficiently extreme to satiate their media appetite. For that subset of neurotically online pro-Trump lunatics, Drudge’s headlines might as well be cheap product cut with heaps of baking soda. The millions-of-members-strong QAnon Facebook groups, on the other hand, offer that pure Bolivian fish-scale, scratch-your-face-off content they crave.

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Staff reporter.

By Joe Pompeo

By Matthew Lysiak

By Chris Smith

By Charlotte Klein

• May 13, 2024 | MBFC’s Daily Vetted Fact Checks for 05/13/2024
• May 13, 2024 | Daily Source Bias Check: BluePrint News
• May 12, 2024 | The Latest Fact Checks curated by Media Bias Fact Check 05/12/2024 (Weekend Edition)
• May 12, 2024 | Daily Source Bias Check: MR Online
• May 11, 2024 | MBFC’s Weekly Media Literacy Quiz Covering the Week of May 5th – May 11th

Drudge Report – Bias and Credibility

Right-center bias.

These media sources are slightly to moderately conservative in bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes) to favor conservative causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation.  See all Right-Center sources.

• Overall, we rate the Drudge Report Right-Center Biased based on story selection and editorial positions that more frequently favor the right. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to occasionally using poor sources with failed fact checks.

Detailed Report

Bias Rating: RIGHT-CENTER Factual Reporting: MIXED Country: USA Press Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Website Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: MEDIUM CREDIBILITY

Founded in 1995 as one of the first independent web-only news sources, The Drudge Report is a politically conservative American news aggregation website run by Matt Drudge. The site consists mainly of links to stories from the United States and international media about politics, entertainment, and current events; it also has links to many columnists. Occasionally, Drudge authors new stories himself, based on tips.  The Drudge Report focuses on sensationalized stories with a right-wing bias. Matt Drudge and Charles Hunt edit the website .

In 2016, Matt Drudge was a strong supporter of Donald Trump; however, in 2018, Drudge began distancing himself from Trump and openly criticized  him , primarily for Trump’s broken promises on the border wall and immigration.

Due to this change in position, some strong Trump supporters have labeled The Drudge Report as the progressive left. For example, Conservative/Libertarian Trump supporter Tucker Carlson stated that  Matt Drudge is “firmly a man of the progressive left,” with the conservative Fox News host comparing the Drudge Report founder to The Daily Beast or “any other woke propaganda outlet posing as a news company.”

Read our profile on the United States government and media.

Funded by / Analysis

The Drudge Report is owned by Matt Drudge and is funded through online advertising.

Analysis / Bias

In review, the Drudge Report typically provides hyperlinks to external news sources, in which Matt Drudge writes the lead in headlines. In the past, almost all news stories favored the right and linked to right-leaning sources. Drudge is also frequently linked to conspiracy sources such as ZeroHedge and Infowars and Questionable sources, with very poor fact-check records, such as Breitbart , WND , and the Gateway Pundit .

Today, the Drudge Report typically links to more credible, lower-biased sources such as the Associated Press , Reuters , The Atlantic , and Fox News . However, there are still times when they publish the Questionable Breitbart as well as the Daily Mail .

Drudge Report also publishes columns from a wide range of journalists such as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Ben Shapiro on the right and Paul Krugman and Maggie Haberman on the left. For the most part, the majority are right-leaning columnists, with many who have poor track records with fact-checkers.

Although the Drudge Report no longer supports Donald Trump, they clearly favor the right based on story selection and the right-leaning columnists that dominate the website. A review of 50 articles revealed that 16 favored the right and 9 favored the left, with the rest falling into a non-political category. In general, the Drudge Report has moderated toward a more Right-Center stance since the last review.

Finally, in the past, the Drudge Report has also promoted numerous debunked conspiracy theories such as The President Obama Birther conspiracy and that Undocumented children are violent criminals . A review of articles over the last two years indicates they have not failed a fact check and do not regularly publish conspiratorial content.

Failed Fact Checks (None recently)

• “Reporters rehearse questions with White House press (secretary).” – PANTS ON FIRE
• “Says Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald “Sterling is a Democrat.” – PANTS ON FIRE
• A photograph shows children holding guns on the US-Mexico border. – FALSE
• Is President Obama’s trip to India going to cost $200 million per day? – FALSE
• BREAKING: Illegal Muslim From Iran Arrested For Starting California Wildfire – PANTS ON FIRE

Overall, we rate the Drudge Report Right-Center Biased based on story selection and editorial positions that more frequently favor the right. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to occasionally using poor sources with failed fact checks. (7/19/2016) Updated (D. Van Zandt 9/09/2022)

Source: https://www.drudgereport.com/

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• Right-Center

Last Updated on May 24, 2023 by Media Bias Fact Check

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Bias of Drudge Report

Drudge Report

How we determined this rating:

• Independent Review
• Community Feedback:   ratings
• AllSides has medium confidence in this bias rating.

Unless otherwise noted, this bias rating refers only to online news coverage, not TV, print, or radio content.

The source either does not show much media bias, displays a balance of articles with left and right biases, or equally balances left and right perspectives in its reporting.

Center doesn't mean better! A Center media bias rating does not necessarily mean a source is totally unbiased, neutral, perfectly reasonable, or credible, just as Left and Right don't necessarily mean extreme, wrong, unreasonable, or not credible. AllSides encourages people to read outlets across the political spectrum.

About Drudge Report's Bias Rating

What a "center" rating means, bias reviews, community feedback, confidence level, additional information.

• Ownership & Funding

Articles from Drudge Report

Drudge Report is a news media source with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Center.

Sources with an AllSides Media Bias Rating of Center either do not show much predictable media bias , display a balance of articles with left and right biases, or equally balance left and right perspectives.

• Drudge Report Bias Rating Moved from Lean Right to Center Following 2023 AllSides Bias Analysis and Editorial Review

Drudge Report Rated Lean Right in Aug. 2018 Editorial Review

Drudge report bias rating moved from lean right to center following allsides bias analysis and editorial review.

In June 2023, AllSides moved Drudge Report’s AllSides Media Bias Rating™ from Lean Right to Center. An April-May 2023 AllSides Drudge Report Bias Analysis found the news aggregator displayed articles from news sources with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ on the left much more than outlets in the center or on the right, resulting in a -0.80 rating on the AllSides Media Bias Meter (close to Lean Left). However, the results lead to an Editorial Review of Drudge Report. We found that while Drudge Report curates mostly from outlets on the left, it often changes headlines and chooses stories that will appeal to a right-wing audience. Therefore,  the AllSides review panel issued an overall AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Center ( +0.93 ) for Drudge Report, which is close to Lean Right.    The Editorial Review found Drudge Report displayed bias by sensationalist story choices and word choices , though the sensationalism was often nonpartisan in nature.

Bias Analysis Summary

AllSides analyzed the source of 280 articles that appeared on DrudgeReport.com’s homepage April 26 to May 9, 2023. Of those, 49% of articles came from sources on the left and 10% from sources on the right – indicating a curation bent to the left of center.

On the homepage, 3% of articles were from Left-rated sources, 46% from Lean Left-rated sources, 26% from Center sources, 7% from Lean Right sources, 3% from Right-rated sources, and 14% from sources not rated by AllSides.

The top sources curated on Drudge Report were the following (note: ratings at the time of analysis; some ratings may have changed):  the Washington Post (Lean Left), The Associated Press (Lean Left), Wall Street Journal (Center),   CNBC (Center), Bloomberg (Lean Left), the New York Times (Lean Left), Mediaite (Lean Left), The New York Post (Lean Right), Reuters (Center), and CNN (Lean Left) .

Editorial Review Summary

The Editorial Review found numerous examples of sensationalism in story choice and word choice . Reviewers on the right and center agreed that even though the articles were often sourced from outlets on the left, the story choice largely appealed to conservative or right-of-center narratives. 

Reviewers on the left and center noted that Drudge Report seemed anti-establishment, anti-Biden, anti-Elon Musk, anti-Trump, but pro-LGBT and pro-Desantis. 

A reviewer on the left said, “I dont think it’s meant to be serious, it’s meant to be fun.”

The reviewers noted that Drudge Report displayed bias that does not fit easily into AllSides bias rating system, as it relies more on sensationalism than overt partisanship. 

As of early 2024, AllSides found the majority of news aggregators analyzed Lean Left, including Google News, Apple News, and Bing News.

Drudge Report was given a Lean Right AllSides Media Bias Rating following an  Editorial Review in August 2018.

Despite its reputation as being very right/conservative, the AllSides panel noted that the Drudge Report regularly features news stories that are mostly being covered by outlets AllSides rates on the left. The panel found that the Drudge Report often aggregated stories from outlets we rated as Left or Lean Left at the time of review, including The Huffington Post , The Washington Post , NBC , and more. While the Drudge Report did feature news stories and articles from sources on the left, it also featured lots of stories from sources with a Right, Lean Right, or Center AllSides Media Bias Rating™ , including Fox News , The Wall Street Journal , and Breitbart .

In fact, upon first looking at the Drudge Report, at least one member of the AllSides panel initially thought that the Drudge Report might warrant a Lean Left or Center bias rating. This initial instinct is consistent with a  2005 UCLA study  which found the Drudge Report has a Lean Left media bias; read more about that study here .

The AllSides editorial panel noted that the Drudge Report often uses sensational stories or language in its headlines and the stories it chooses to feature. Some members of the AllSides panel expressed concerns about the Drudge Report publishing sensationalist or fake news .

Top of Page

As of May 2024, people have voted on the AllSides Media Bias Rating for Drudge Report. On average, those who disagree with our rating think this source has a Center bias.

As of May 2024, AllSides has medium confidence in our Center rating for Drudge Report. An Editorial Review or Blind Bias Survey has affirmed this rating, or multiple reviews have returned differing results. If we perform more bias reviews and gather consistent data, this confidence level will increase.

Drudge Report is a news aggregation website. Run by Matt Drudge with the help of Joseph Curl and Charles Hurt, the site consists mainly of links to stories from the United States and international mainstream media about politics, entertainment, and current events, as well as links to many columnists. Occasionally, Drudge authors new stories himself based on tips. The Report originated in 1996 as a weekly subscriber-based email dispatch. It was the first news source to break the Monica Lewinsky scandal to the public after Newsweek decided not to publish the story.

Drudge met Andrew Breitbart in Los Angeles during the 1990s and became his mentor, with Breitbart later helping to run the Drudge Report. 

UCLA Study on Drudge Report Finds Center / Lean Left Bias Due to Aggregation

A 2005 UCLA stud y found that Drudge Report has a center/lean left bias, due to the website aggregating news from other media outlets. The study's lead author was Tim Groseclose, formerly UCLA faculty and currently Adam Smith Chair at George Mason University's Mercatus Center.

The study authors wrote (emphasis ours):

Another result, which appears anomalous, is not so anomalous upon further examination. This is the estimate for the Drudge Report, which at 60.4, places it approximately in the middle of our mix of media outlets and approximately as liberal as a typical Southern Democrat, such as John Breaux (D-LA). We should emphasize that this estimate reflects both the news flashes that Matt Drudge reports and the news stories to which his site links on other web sites. In fact, of the entire 311 think-tank citations we found in the Drudge Report, only five came from reports written by Matt Drudge. Thus, for all intents and purposes, our estimate for the DrudgeReport refers only to the articles to which the Report links on other web sites. Although the conventional wisdom often asserts that the Drudge Report is relatively conservative, we believe that the conventional wisdom would also assert that—if confined only to the news stories to which the Report links on other web sites—this set would have a slant approximately equal to the average slant of all media outlets, since, after all, it is comprised of stories from a broad mix of such outlets.

Previous AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ for Drudge Report

AllSides previously rated The Drudge Report as having a  Right media bias. We switched its bias rating to Lean Right following the Aug. 2018 Editorial Review .

Third-Party Accusations of Bias

The Drudge Report has been criticized in the past for running stories that were hoaxes, poorly sourced, or unfactual , including a theory that Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen, a hoax about a former prostitute who claimed her son was fathered by Bill Clinton, and a false statement that an undocumented immigrant started the October 2017 Northern California wildfires.

Bias of Drudge Report's Audience

According to a  2014 Pew Research study , the clear majority of Drudge Report's audience (74%) is right-of-center (by comparison, 26% of all Pew panelists were right-of-center). 8% of  Drudge Report's audience is left or left-of-center (compared with 38% of all respondents to the survey). Roughly 18% of Drudge Report's audience holds political values consistent with the political center or exhibit mixed values (compared with 36% of all panelists).

Drudge Report Ownership and Funding

Owner: Matt Drudge

High-profile New York lawyer says he tried to advise judge in Trump civil fraud case

Judge arthur engoron said he was "wholly uninfluenced.", by melissa russo and jonathan dienst • published may 8, 2024 • updated on may 9, 2024 at 8:25 am.

This story originally appeared on NBCNewYork.com .

A high-profile New York real estate lawyer, whose law license was once suspended, said he approached the judge presiding over Donald Trump ’s civil fraud case to offer unsolicited advice about a law at issue in the case.

Attorney Adam Leitman Bailey made the claim during an interview with NBC New York, saying he spoke to Judge Arthur Engoron three weeks prior to the judge’s February decision to fine the former president $454 million for falsely inflating the value of his assets.

24/7 New York news stream: Watch NBC 4 free wherever you are

The judge, through a court spokesman, denied impropriety and said he was “wholly uninfluenced” by Mr. Bailey. New York’s judicial oversight body has now launched an investigation into the alleged interaction, according to sources familiar with the matter.

N.Y. AG seeks more information about Trump bond, collateral

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Court agrees to block collection of Trump's $457 million civil fraud judgment if he puts up $175M

"I actually had the ability to speak to him three weeks ago," Bailey said, during an on-camera interview with NBC New York on Feb. 16, the day the judge's decision was due. "I saw him in the corner [at the courthouse] and I told my client, 'I need to go.' And I walked over and we started talking … I wanted him to know what I think and why…I really want him to get it right."

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NBC New York asked a spokesman for Engoron whether the judge had spoken with Bailey about any legal issues surrounding the Trump civil fraud matter , and whether the alleged interaction had been appropriate.

"No ex parte conversation concerning this matter occurred between Justice Engoron and Mr. Bailey or any other person. The decision Justice Engoron issued February 16 was his alone, was deeply considered, and was wholly uninfluenced by this individual,” said Al Baker, a spokesman for the New York State's Office of Court Administration, in a written statement

In legalese, the term "ex parte" describes a communication between a party or their legal counsel and a judge about a pending case without all the parties present.

Bailey, who said he is no fan of Trump, was not involved in the civil case and is not connected to any of the four separate criminal cases against the former president. He said he knows the judge from having appeared before him as a litigant "hundreds of times."

Bailey said he "explained to him" that a fraud statute at issue in the case was not intended to be used to shut down a major company, especially in a case without clear victims. He said such a ruling would hurt New York's economy. Engoron had rejected a similar argument raised by the Trump team in court.

"He had a lot of questions, you know, about certain cases. We went over it," Bailey said.

Baker, the court spokesman, did not reply when asked whether the judge had engaged with Bailey or asked questions.

State legal conduct rules govern interactions with judges about their pending cases outside of official courtroom proceedings.

The New York State Rules of Judicial Conduct state that "a judge shall not initiate, permit, or consider ex parte communications, or consider other communications made to the judge outside the presence of the parties or their lawyers." The rules do allow an exception to "obtain the advice of a disinterested expert," if a judge gives notice to the parties in the case and gives them the opportunity to respond.

The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct will now consider whether the rules of judicial conduct were violated in this instance, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The commission’s administrator, Robert Tembeckjian, declined to comment, citing a statute on confidentiality.

Christopher Kise, a member of the Trump defense team which has repeatedly criticized Engoron’s handling of the case, said if Bailey’s claims are true, it casts doubt on the integrity of the process.

"The code doesn’t provide an exception for 'well, this was a small conversation' or 'well, it didn’t really impact me' or 'well, this wasn’t something that I, the judge, found significant," Kise said. "No. The code is very clear."

Several experts consulted by NBC New York said the rules are meant not only to prevent outside influence, but also any appearance of outside influence.

Retired Presiding New York Appellate Justice Alan Scheinkman said he has questions about Bailey's account. However, he said in a case as consequential as the Trump civil fraud matter, if Bailey's allegation is true, it would have been prudent for Engoron to disclose the interaction to both parties in the case.

"If there's any substantive dialogue about the law in a pending case, it should be disclosed," Scheinkman said.

In a second on-camera interview with NBC New York, Bailey stood by his account, but said he didn’t think he or the judge had done anything wrong. Bailey said they only spoke about the law.

"We didn't even mention the word Donald Trump," Bailey said. When asked if he thought the judge understood him to be talking about the Trump case, he said: "Well, obviously we weren't talking about the Mets."

Scheinkman, who now teaches legal ethics at Pace University Law School, said the interaction described by Bailey is "very troubling."

"The fact that this lawyer made these statements — unprompted — during a recorded TV interview should raise serious concerns," Scheinkman said.

Professor Bruce Green, director of Fordham Law School's Center for Law and Ethics, said it's not against the rules for judges and lawyers to talk about the law in the abstract.

"Judges don't have to live in a bubble,” Green said. "Whether a judge's hallway conversation with a lawyer is permissible or impermissible depends on the conversation."

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Letitia James, who brought and won the civil case against Trump, declined to comment on Bailey's claims.

Bailey has appeared as an expert for two decades in The New York Times' "Ask Real Estate" column. In Nov. 2011, he sued the Trump Soho condominium, alleging that buyers were misled. In a settlement, Bailey’s clients got most of their money back and Trump admitted no wrongdoing.

In 2019, a New York appellate court suspended Bailey's law license for four months for misconduct in two separate matters. Bailey improperly used his cellphone to take photos of witnesses during an arbitration hearing and threatened to share them with the media, court records show. In the other incident, Bailey told a tenant in a case that they "should just kill themselves," according to the appellate court’s decision.

New York’s Rules of Professional Conduct say that lawyers should not “state or imply an ability” to improperly influence a judge.

Since February, both Bailey and the judge’s spokesman have stopped responding to NBC New York’s questions, declining to provide details that might shed light on the disparity between Bailey’s account of a dialogue, and the written denial from the court spokesman.

The Commission on Judicial Conduct investigates alleged improprieties involving state judges. Of nearly 3,000 complaints filed in 2023, only about 200 resulted in an investigation, according to the commission’s data. About one in four investigations resulted in a finding of wrongdoing, with consequences ranging from confidential letters of caution to a judge vacating the bench.

Investigations by the Commission on Judicial Conduct are conducted in secret, and can take anywhere from months to more than a year, according to recent annual reports.

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Trial of Winnipeg man who admits to killing 4 women to be heard by judge alone

Jeremy skibicki asks to be found not criminally responsible in the deaths.

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The jury trial of a man accused of killing four women in Winnipeg will now instead be heard by a judge alone, a change that comes after Jeremy Skibicki's lawyers said he admits to killing the women but will ask to be found not criminally responsible.

The Crown says that given it no longer has to prove Skibicki, 37, caused the women's deaths, prosecutors are now willing to proceed with a judge-alone trial — something they had previously strongly opposed.

Crown attorney Christian Vanderhooft revealed the update in court on Monday morning, saying the shift in their position came after lawyers for Skibicki said for the first time last week they planned to admit their client unlawfully killed all four women in 2022, but argue he was not criminally responsible due to mental disorder.

Skibicki has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of three First Nations women — Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26, and Rebecca Contois, 24 — and a fourth, unidentified woman, who has been given the name Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, by community members.

Vanderhooft said prosecutors will now focus on proving Skibicki was criminally responsible for the women's deaths, and have concluded that "proceeding by judge alone will provide the best route to making sure this matter proceeds with the necessary flexibility required — a type of flexibility that isn't always easy to achieve in a jury trial."

"Our decision today to proceed by judge alone is not a reflection of our faith in the jury system or a comment on the propriety of judicial independence, or any lack of respect for either mode of trial," he said. 

"Rather, it is a consequence of the Crown's role at all times to continually assess our case and make sure a trial can proceed and conclude in a timely way."

Admission 'kind of a shock' to family

When asked whether he was happy with the update on Monday, Skibicki's lawyer, Leonard Tailleur, said "it's not a matter of happiness."

"It's to ensure that justice is done one way or the other, right? And that's what we're concerned with," Tailleur told reporters outside court.

"As things develop in a case, then you go with the developments."

Melissa Robinson, whose cousin, Morgan Harris, was one of women Skibicki has admitted to killing, said her family couldn't believe it when they heard that update.

"I don't even have any words," she said, "It was just kind of a shock, but we're so happy — our whole family will be so happy to hear this." 

She said her family now plans to spend time together and share the news with people at Camp Morgan, the camp set up at a Winnipeg landfill as families pushed for a search for Harris's and Myran's remains, which have still not been recovered.

"And we'll be back here Wednesday morning, ready to go," Robinson said.

Defence previously tried to toss jury

Defence confirmed on Wednesday last week that they plan to argue a defence of not criminally responsible, as they made submissions on a motion to toss the jury scheduled to hear Skibicki's case.

That motion was their second attempt to have the case heard by a judge alone, after Court of King's Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal rejected a similar request earlier this year.

Both defence motions were filed as the Crown refused to provide their consent to have the case heard by a judge instead of a jury — consent that's required on certain charges in Canada, including murder.

• Trial of Winnipeg man accused of killing 4 women to be heard by jury, judge rules
• Lawyers for Winnipeg man accused of killing 4 women plan to argue he's not criminally responsible

Vanderhooft said Monday the Crown often consents to judge-alone trials in cases where a person is arguing they were not criminally responsible, when they're advised of that plan early on in the case.

He said Skibicki's defence first advised the Crown they planned to call expert evidence related to the issue of whether the accused is criminally responsible on March 14, and provided prosecutors with a copy of an expert opinion from the defence last Thursday evening.

By then, he said the Crown had already found their own expert to testify for rebuttal on the issue if needed, in anticipation the defence might make such an argument.

Prosecutors were expected to make arguments Monday morning on a motion to admit similar fact evidence in Skibicki's trial. 

However, those submissions were no longer needed after Crown and defence agreed the evidence would be admissible, Vanderhooft said, adding prosecutors plan to use it to establish intent and mental capacity in the case.

'Uphill battle' for defence: legal expert

The onus will now be on Skibicki's defence team to prove he was not criminally responsible in the women's deaths — a job Brandon Trask, an assistant law professor at the University of Manitoba, thinks could be tough to pull off.

Trask, who is not involved in the trial, said cases where a person argues they're not criminally responsible typically involve something they did over a short period of time. However, police said they believe Skibicki killed the women over a period of two months.

"Now you've got a potentially much longer period of time across the span of four killings. I think that's a real uphill battle for the defence in this case," he said. "It's going to be interesting to see what they try to put forward as proving that on a balance of probabilities."

Skibicki's lawyers will have to prove both that he was suffering from what's known as a disease of the mind at the time of the killings, and that the disease made him unable to understand either what he was doing or that it was wrong.

Prosecutors, on the other hand, will have to "poke holes" in those arguments by cross-examining the defence's witnesses, Trask said.

Police initially arrested Skibicki roughly two years ago, after partial human remains later identified as Contois's were found in a garbage bin near a Winnipeg apartment building in mid-May 2022. The following month, police recovered more of her remains from the Brady Road landfill in south Winnipeg.

Police said their investigation determined the three other women were killed between March and May 2022 — before Contois died. Police said they believe Myran's and Harris's remains are in the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg.

• Lawyers for Winnipeg man accused of killing 4 women argue media coverage has tainted jury

In March, the Manitoba and federal governments each pledged $20 million to go toward searching that landfill for the remains of the two women.

Police have said they believe Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe was Indigenous and in her mid-20s, but the location of her remains is unknown.

The trial is scheduled to be back in court on Wednesday morning, when the judge has said he plans to call the jury in as scheduled to formally discharge them before the trial begins that day. The trial is scheduled to continue until June 6.

Winnipeg man now admits to killing 4 women

About the author.

Caitlyn Gowriluk has been writing for CBC Manitoba since 2019. Her work has also appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press, and in 2021 she was part of an award-winning team recognized by the Radio Television Digital News Association for its breaking news coverage of COVID-19 vaccines. Get in touch with her at [email protected].

• Follow Caitlyn Gowriluk on X

With files from Cameron MacIntosh and Josh Crabb

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Judge Gives Alvin Bragg's Office a Message for Michael Cohen

J udge Juan Merchan asked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office to deliver a message for Michael Cohen ahead of his testimony in former President Donald Trump 's hush money trial.

Cohen, who previously served as Trump's attorney, is set to testify next week in the trial. Bragg's office charged the former president with falsifying business documents related to a hush money payment allegedly made to adult film actor Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Bragg's office alleges the payment was intended to block her from speaking publicly about her claims of having an affair with Trump.

Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has denied having an affair with Daniels and pleaded not guilty to all 34 criminal charges. He maintains his innocence and has accused Bragg and other prosecutors of targeting him for political purposes, criticizing the trial as a form of election interference.

Cohen is expected to begin his testimony on Monday. He allegedly made the $130,000 payment to Daniels and is a key witness in the case. His testimony could last for several days as he answers questions from prosecutors and the former president's defense lawyers.

Trump's attorney, Todd Blanche, asked Merchan on Friday to instruct Cohen to refrain from communicating about the case, according to Newsweek reporter Katherine Fung, who has reported on the trial from inside the courtroom.

He raised concerns about Trump being under a gag order restricting his ability to make public statements about the trial witnesses but that Cohen, a Trump critic, has been allowed to make public comments about the former president.

Cohen has indicated he would not make public comments about the case because he is a witness, but this week, went viral over a livestream on TikTok this week in which he appeared to be wearing a shirt showing a cartoon of Trump in prison.

Merchan told Bragg's office to inform Cohen that he is asking him not to make any more public comments about the case.

"I will direct the People to communicate to Mr. Cohen that the judge is asking him to refrain from making any more statements about this case. That comes from the bench and you are communicating that on behalf of the bench," Merchan said, according to Politico.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass says the People have "repeatedly, repeatedly" asked all their witnesses not to do so.

Newsweek reached out to Cohen via MeidasTouch, the media company that publishes his Mea Culpa podcast, for comment.

Trump has been critical of the gag order against him, which prevents him from attacking the witnesses, jury or family of prosecutors or judge. He has argued it amounts to an unjust limit of his freedom of speech amid his presidential bid. Proponents of the gag order, however, say it is necessary to protect the safety of those involved in the trial.

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