In the new podcast series, Finding Matt Drudge, Chris Moody wants to know two things: why Matt Drudge dropped out of sight and why he turned on Donald Trump.

If it is still really Drudge running the DrudgeReport now, and not some paid lackey to push links, then it would not be unreasonable to think he’s hanging on for one last job, to do what Joe Biden, the Lincoln Project, Liz and Dick Cheney, Mike Pence and every other Never Trumper has been trying to do for the last eight years: stop Trump for good.

I got online right around the same time Drudge did. For early internet pioneers, Drudge was our hero who forged a path to success by removing the middleman. Just start a website, and people will come. I was living in a guest house in Van Nuys, California, with a baby on my hip, a 1200 baud modem, and a really good idea.

I launched my site, Oscarwatch.com in 1999, two years after the DrudgeReport launched. The Academy sued me in 2006, and I had to change it to AwardsDaily.com. But that was a sign I’d found success, five years after I started. For Drudge it happened instantly and almost overnight. He broke the story of the century: Bill Clinton was having a sexual affair with his intern, Monica Lewinsky.

We all wanted to be Drudge. His success told us we could follow in his footsteps and maybe get that big overnight. It didn’t quite work out that way for most of us. There was only ever going to be one Matt Drudge. But everyone who came after him bit off a little piece of the Drudge legacy.

We would crash the party and upstage traditional media, which was still scrambling to keep up with the fast-moving internet. Drudge was suddenly a reliable source for news. People like me pretended to be journalists, but because we had websites that reported the news, we became reliable sources, too.

Kara Swisher has a good strategy for Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump, which she shared on CNN. Just call Trump three things: Racist, Rapist, Fascist.

There was a time when that would have worked. That time has come and gone. At best, Swisher will be ruthlessly mocked online and, at worst, completely ignored. For someone who studied propaganda, she sure has become good at peddling it. Maybe it will cycle through the Facebook feeds of whatever is left of the #resistance, a relic of the old days when CNN still influenced public opinion.

This is the death rattle of legacy media and probably the Democratic Party as we once knew it. Or, as Steve Bannon says every time he begins a new episode of The War Room, “This is the primal scream of a dying regime.”

By now, the CIA, the FBI, and the Democrats are waking up to the reality of life without their precious blue-checks on Twitter. They can’t control the media narrative to boost Biden and sink Trump as they did in 2020. There’s no COVID. Biden has no choice but to get out there and campaign.

The Biden administration has been using TikTok throughout Biden’s first term. It was their strategy to mobilize young voters. That’s why they invited the transgender influencers to the White House. Remember that?

//

Dear Mr. De Niro,

I trust you had a wonderful evening at the Oscars. Watching you bask in the comforting embrace of the special people was a reminder of who you really are—a movie star.

By the looks of it, the Oscars are back. They have a host now and they gave their top prize to a movie people actually saw. It won a whopping 7 Oscars. There were dance numbers and jokes, beautiful people in their finery—a grand celebration to revive the lifeless body of Hollywood.

I was shocked that they kept politics mostly out of it—well, until near the end when Jimmy Kimmel just had to bring in Trump—not just to mock him but to show the country which side all of you are on and to let them know, in no uncertain terms, that they are not invited to this party.

Turns out, Trump really did write that:

But might I say, Mr. De Niro, none of you seem able to figure out if Trump is such a criminal/fascist/dictator/rapist/racist, why he’s kicking Biden’s ass in the polls six ways from Sunday? Funny, isn’t it, Mr. De Niro? Didn’t Bill Maher ask you this same question on Real Time? You didn’t have an answer except to say that Trump is a “monster,” a “mean, nasty, and hateful person.”

And that if “We want to live in a world that we want to live and enjoy living in, or live in a nightmare. Vote for Trump, and you'll get the nightmare.”

Let me get this straight. You said that you would never play Trump because there is “Nothing redeemable in him.”

So, Max Cady in Cape Fear, Al Capone in The Untouchables, and William Hale in Killers of the Flower Moon had redeemable traits? They were all mass murderers, Mr. De Niro, yet you not only delighted in playing those roles but also earned Oscar nominations for two of them. And I’m betting a nice fat paycheck at the end of the day.

Al Capone was connected to hundreds of murders, William Hale committed a near-genocide of the Osage people, and Max Cady, well, need we be reminded?

Trump is not nice to you, Mr. De Niro. That is true. He isn’t very nice to Hollywood or Jimmy Kimmel, or to the establishment. But did it ever occur to you that so many people love him because he isn’t one of you? And that your crazy ramblings about him only make his supporters love him even more?

You, like Hollywood, like the Democrats, like Bill Maher, have become so disconnected from the lives of Americans that you can’t possibly understand why Trump is by far preferable. You seem to think you have the right to tell them what they should want, what they should care about, and that your own personal happiness should be a factor they consider.

Have you driven through any of our cities lately? Have you driven down to the border? Have you gone to a grocery store? Have you gone into Walmart only to see everything locked up, from baby formula to batteries to deodorant? Have you driven across America to see what this country is really like?

I’m guessing not. Why would you? You go from the film set to your multi-million dollar property, and you turn on MSNBC and CNN and you RAGE RAGE against the man they keep telling you is a dictator and fascist who will never leave office, take Bill Maher off the air, and then hunt you down like you’re Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor.

Guess what I’m doing on Super Tuesday? I’m registering as a Republican to vote for Donald Trump in the primary in California. They won’t allow me to vote as an independent for President of the United States, so for the first time in my life, I will be one of the people I used to judge and hate.

I also plan to vote red straight down the line. Oh, I realize this is like spitting in the Pacific Ocean in my state. Still, if other residents in California are starting to see what anyone driving through Los Angeles or San Francisco can see, there’s a small chance the dark blue state might start to purple.

I know I’m not the only American sick of the whining, the caterwauling, the temper tantrums because the ruling class isn’t getting what they want. WAAAAA the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case on presidential immunity. WAAAAA Trump said something in one of his speeches. WAAAAA the New York Times wrote a negative column on Joe Biden.

The only thing they haven’t done is prove to the American people that they’re the better option than the guy who promises to close the border, clean up the streets, crack down on crime, and get our economy back on track in a way Americans can feel, not just because Paul Krugman delivers yet another sanctimonious op-ed of Biden talking points.

There are plenty of candidates for the most flattering magic mirror/propagandist for the Biden administration - Rachel Maddow, Stephen Colbert, Pod Save America, Lawrence O’Donnell but really, it’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski who has now decided to yet again beclown themselves by platforming a stupid book that looks a lot more like Mein Kampf than any revelation about Trump supporters. All so they can keep eating dinner with Joe and Jill.

It took me some time to consider an “extra” for paid subscribers, and I came up with a free-form podcast, not written as an essay but just an improvisational ramble. It’s meant to be casual so, of course, it is not perfect. I hope to get better over time.

The first 20 minutes will be a free preview, and the rest will be behind the paywall. I hope you …

Fear is trickling down the walls at the White House like blood from a crime scene. They try to wipe it away with a Lawrence O’Donnell monologue here, a Stephen Colbert freak out there.

Any other president at any other time in American history would be sweating. But Joe Biden isn’t.

It reminds me of this scene from the movie Quiz Show where the investigator, played by Rob Morrow, corners the President of NBC, played by Allan Rich, in an elevator. We have finally got you, Morrow says. Oh yeah? Rich says. Then why are you the one that’s sweating?

And so it goes with the Biden administration.

But there is no hiding it. Nate Silver is worried. The New York Times is worried. Politico is worried. Rolling Stone is worried. It’s so bad that they’ve given up towing the party line and are actually speaking out for the first time since Biden took office. They’re desperate for Biden to step aside and give the job to someone, anyone who will stop Trump.

///

Donald Trump isn’t Alexei Navalny. He wasn’t poisoned or beaten or tortured, then left to die in a Siberian gulag. We aren’t under the control of a dictator like Putin. But there is no getting around the ugly truth that none of this would happen if Biden weren’t trailing Trump in the polls.

News of Navalny’s death sent shockwaves through both sides of the political aisle, as each tried to grapple with the many conflicts we’re now facing, the war in Ukraine and the war on Donald Trump, but it’s the Democrats whose actions of late were put into the spotlight.

Only one political party is actively trying to jail its primary political opponent, has thrown political protesters in solitary confinement, and violated the First Amendment by censoring speech on social media.

How would they shapeshift their way out of this problem? It’s easy. They don’t even respect the people enough to be honest with them. Instead, they rationalize it, “Trump committed actual crimes,” they said. “Trump’s the one who chanted Lock Her Up,” they insist, as if chanting is the same as doing.

Similarly, most Russians believe Navalny committed “actual crimes” because that’s the power of taking complete control of the media narrative. Putin charged him as an extremist and with “fraud,” just as our government has done to Trump.

A source tells Free Thinking what’s really going on.

What old man in the White House? I didn’t see any old man in the White House. The President, you mean? Oh, that’s just Joe Biden. He’s fine. With age comes wisdom.

Joe did nothing wrong, and even if he did, it was decided he could not stand trial. Hur is not a neurologist. He doesn’t know what’s going on in Joe’s brain. It was a stressful day. The attacks on October 7th were distracting. You can’t expect the President of the United States to handle that kind of pressure.

Look at him now. He’s fine. He’s better than fine. He’s the Most Qualified Person to Serve.

So what if he didn’t remember when he was Vice President. Who remembers stuff like that? He’s been in government since the 1970s. How is he to know what position he served and when. It’s confusing.

Here he is eating fried chicken with Black people. Fried chicken. If Trump tried that the media would turn it into a National Security Crisis.

This video alone has 26K views. People are ENGAGED. Do you think Trump’s videos get that many views? No decent person could ever support Trump. That’s why we offer them Joe. Joe. Nothing but Joe. Oh, and Kamala too.

And anyway, we all know “Dark Brandon” is Obama, and Biden is basically serving his third term. I mean, why did we get rid of term limits anyway? Obama hasn’t ever left. He’s constantly influencing American culture - with his $30 million Netflix deal and his omnipresence on Twitter. If you have an entire country treating you like an actual God, and you have that big of an ego, how many people do you think would walk away from that?

I don’t know what’s going to happen. All I can say is this: The man we saw speaking from the White House tonight, on February 8—that man will not be reelected president. Maybe Biden can become a new man. Maybe he’s had an off week. Maybe they can adjust his meds. Maybe. But probably not. Right? Probably not. —John Podhoretz, Commentary

They’ve been lying about Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities since at least 2020. COVID allowed them to hide both Biden and Harris far from the prying eyes of the press and the public while the system won the election for them. They just needed to exist as more of an idea rather than a reality. Voters would choose them as the more moderate option. And, more importantly, take Trump out of power.

But I’d stood a few feet away from Joe Biden in May of 2019. The man I saw give a speech that day and mingle in the crowd was not the man who emerged more than a year later to make minimal appearances during campaign season. He’d gotten through the primaries okay. He was old but hanging on.

Heading into the election, however, it was clear something was not quite right. Now, he looked lost, with eyes that appeared vacant and unless someone was guiding him, he wandered around in a dream state.

I told my friends I was worried that Biden was in the early stages of dementia, like my dad, who was consumed by it in 2018. They snapped back that Trump was a fascist, and it didn’t matter how incapacitated Biden was. They’d still vote for him.

What did they know, and when did they know it?

Besides ushering in a fanatical cult, the first real sign of trouble was the exit from Afghanistan in August of 2021. Word had it Biden had ignored his top brass and was arrogantly aiming for a 9/11 photo op.

But with bodies falling off airplanes, 13 American soldiers dead, there was no way even the most skilled operators in the media could spin a visibly botched job. Even if it was barely a news story, the public took notice, and no doubt, world leaders did too.

That “x” is Afghanistan. His numbers have never recovered.

[source: Real Clear Politics]

“So you’re voting for Du-taxus?” a woman said to me in 1988. I was a lowly receptionist at a gym called “Women Only,” which was probably later sued out of business. I had to answer the phone with, “We have the way, Women Only, this is Sasha, may I help you?”

I was undoubtedly blurting out this mouthful when the client noticed my Dukakis pin, because why wouldn’t she? I told her yes, I was, though I wasn’t “political” back then, and I had no idea why I was voting for Dukakis. He was a Democrat. Being a Democrat wasn’t something I chose. It was something I was. Some guy I was dating probably handed me the pin and told me to wear it, so I complied.

Understandably annoyed, the woman said, “Figures. You probably never even went to college.” I remember this story all of these years later because it’s still surprising to me that a Republican would insult a Democrat’s lack of education. But it tells you everything you need to know about who had the power back then and who didn’t.

After that, I was determined to cobble together my many city college credits and attend UCLA. I would graduate as a transfer student at the age of 29. I was older than everyone else, but I was the first person in my family to graduate. Now, I was prepared for any sudden encounter with an elitist Republican.