{"id":27352,"date":"2025-05-03T07:20:03","date_gmt":"2025-05-03T11:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=27352"},"modified":"2025-05-03T07:20:03","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T11:20:03","slug":"white-house-launches-a-drudge-report-doppelganger-jokingly-threatened-with-1-trillion-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2025\/05\/white-house-launches-a-drudge-report-doppelganger-jokingly-threatened-with-1-trillion-lawsuit","title":{"rendered":"White House Launches a Drudge Report Doppelg\u00e4nger, \u201cJokingly\u201d Threatened With $1 Trillion Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_27355\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-27355\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2025\/05\/White-House-Wire_credit-WhiteHouse-X.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27355\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2025\/05\/White-House-Wire_credit-WhiteHouse-X.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-27355\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">@WhiteHouse \/ X<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1995, political commentator and journalist Matt Drudge began publishing entertainment and political gossip in a newsletter for 1,000 subscribers. By 1997, the newsletter had grown to 85,000 subscribers. Yet, the \u201cDrudge Report\u201d didn\u2019t officially become a global political punditry website until a year later when it <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.poynter.org\/ethics-trust\/2025\/poynter-50-matt-drudge-report-clinton-lewinsky-newsweek-scoop\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The White House has now decided to clone the site (almost identically) to remove traffic from what was once one of conservative\u2019s most significant supporters. Called \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/wire\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The White House Wire<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u201d the new website is another attempt to circumvent the national media, which President Trump consistently claims remains opposed to his administration\u2019s policies.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-media-max-width=\"560\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">??The White House has its own wire now.<\/p>\n<p>Read what we&#8217;re reading \u27a1\ufe0f <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/4FKzXvskXb\">https:\/\/t.co\/4FKzXvskXb<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/vk7ryBSKh0\">pic.twitter.com\/vk7ryBSKh0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The White House (@WhiteHouse) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WhiteHouse\/status\/1917735415655567824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 1, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An anonymous White House official stated that the new outlet is strategically created to \u201cdisseminate Trump-favorable coverage.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s a place for supporters of the president\u2019s agenda to get the real news all in one place in a shareable and readable format,\u201d the official said. \u201cThe website will be a one-stop shop for news and is part of the Trump administration\u2019s effort to provide transparency and institute policies that put America first.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From its .gov URL, the White House Wire links to articles about administration progress, RSS feeds quoting key personnel, including Secretaries and the President, and even delves into social media posts. It was developed to have the same massive headline size and columns of aggregators, reading <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cfair and accurate coverage of the administration.\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The White House Communications Office aims to make it a must-bookmark site for anyone interested in Trump\u2019s side of the news created by his policies and orders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Incensed by the alleged copyright infringement, Matt Drudge released on the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.drudgereport.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Drudge Report<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with an inflammatory headline, \u201cIT TAKES AN ENTIRE WEST WING TO COMPETE WITH DRUDGE.\u201d Another read, \u201cTRUMP LAUNCHING HIS OWN DRUDGE REPORT USING TAXPAYER DOLLARS.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the political blog, Axios, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2025\/04\/30\/trump-white-house-drudge-style-website-launch\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">it was written that<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u201c[Drudge] later joked to Axios: \u2018I\u2019m considering a $1 trillion lawsuit.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Media experts considered that the \u201cWire\u201d is implied after<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2025\/04\/15\/media\/white-house-pool-wire-services-ap-reuters-bloomberg\/index.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the White House removed<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the Associated Press, Reuters, and Bloomberg from their typical front-row spots in the White House press poll and daily access to the president. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1995, political commentator and journalist Matt Drudge began publishing entertainment and political gossip in a newsletter for 1,000 subscribers. By 1997, the newsletter had grown to 85,000 subscribers. Yet, the \u201cDrudge Report\u201d didn\u2019t officially become a global political punditry website until a year later when it broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal.\u00a0 The White House&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":27355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>White House Launches a Drudge Report Doppelg\u00e4nger, \u201cJokingly\u201d Threatened With $1 Trillion Lawsuit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The White House launches a Drudge-style news site to promote Trump\u2019s agenda\u2014sparking backlash and copyright claims from Matt Drudge 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