Drudge Tells CNN His Traffic Is Up, Countering Trump's Claim

Despite what President Donald Trump says, Internet giant Matt Drudge says he is still king of Internet news.

And the data backs him up.

The founder of the conservative news site The Drudge Report issued a rare statement countering President Trump's claim the website has lost huge numbers of viewers since it adopted a more critical stance toward his administration.

Trump stated in a tweet: "I gave up on Drudge (a really nice guy) long ago, as have many others. People are dropping like flies!"

In an email to CNN over the weekend, Drudge insisted: "The past 30 days has been the most eyeballs in Drudge Report's 26 year-history. Heartbreaking that it has been under such tragic circumstances."

For years, Drudge's site had been an early and dyed-in-the-wool supporter of Trump and his policies, and often linked to complimentary stories about the president from his website.

But many media observers perceived a change last summer, when The Drudge Report began to feature more negative stories about the president and his team.

CNN backed up Drudge's statement about record traffic by reporting numbers the website gave them showing a major boost in traffic in March.

According to that data, Drudge had 1.2 billion page views in March, up from 781 million page views in February.

The web analytics firm Quantcast reported, in the last 30 days, Drudge has received 228 million visits, a number probably fueled in part by interest in the coronavirus pandemic.

It is unknown exactly why Drudge seems to have shifted against the administration, although a source told CNN Business last year that the media baron had become "exasperated" with the president.

Until the past weekend, Trump had said little about Drudge. In his last comment, made in February, Trump said Drudge was "starting to treat me good again. He's starting to like me again. I like him."