For Clinton loyalist David Brock, the Drudge Report’s Matt Drudge continues to be a key figure in what he calls “the right-wing plot to derail Hillary.”
Brock and Drudge have a storied relationship, going back to Brock’s time as a conservative journalist and Drudge’s first major scoop — former President Bill Clinton’s extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Brock’s new book, Killing the Messenger: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary and Hijack Your Government, is an attempt to discredit Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s critics. Those critics include Republicans and reporters who write unflattering stories about the former secretary of state.
But he pays homage to Drudge, whose website has wielded influence in media and politics for the nearly two decades since the Lewinsky scandal. In the book, Brock mentions Drudge and the Drudge Report 15 separate times.
“Today, faced with new online competitors, the Drudge Report has lost its edge, rarely breaking ‘news’ anymore,” Brock writes. “But it remains a powerful news aggregator, incentivizing mainstream reporters to treat right-wing Orwellian ‘newspeak’ as news.”
Brock refers to Drudge as “my old buddy” in the book and notes several reports that were splashed across the Drudge Report in recent months that cast Hillary Clinton as corrupt or old.
One such headline on the Drudge Report from last year, well before Clinton declared her second bid for the White House, blared, “PHOTO: IS CLINTON HOLDING A WALKER?”
The photo was actually a cover of People magazine, which featured clinton holding the back of a lawn chair.
Since he converted from right-wing journalist to Clinton ally, Brock has built a network of websites that defend Clinton and other Democrats from negative press reports and Republican attacks. Among them are Media Matters for America, a media watchdog, and Correct the Record, which rebuts all criticism of Clinton.
Brock’s book publishes on Sep. 15.
