‘Drudge Report’ Website Under Government Attack? Matt Drudge Thinks So

Matt Drudge sent out a couple of interesting tweets on Thursday, December 29 — even more interesting than the hat that Drudge has been known to wear as his signature look. As seen in the below tweet, Drudge’s official Twitter account asked if the U.S. government was attacking the Drudge Report, a popular conservative website known for having a bunch of links on its homepage. Drudge called the potential hack or attack the largest DDoS since the website began — which is saying a lot, since Matt has been around online for nearly a decade.

DDoS stands for a distributed denial of service, and the brutal DDoS attacks that have befallen Spotify and Twitter, as reported by Gizmodo, don’t bode well for the future. Basically, a DDoS attack on a site mimics a website getting a ton of traffic from a bunch of sources, to the point where that website can’t handle the traffic for its regular visitors. As seen in the above photo from 1997, Drudge has been delivering his The Drudge Report news to subscribers since email newsletters were more popular. According to the below Associated Press description from the photo, it’s been nearly a decade since that photo was taken.

“Matt Drudge carries a laptop computer as he walks up the stairs at his Hollywood-area apartment in Los Angeles June 18, 1997. The Drudge Report, the daily barrage of breaking news, gossip and politics he e-mails to some 65,000 subscribers, is hotter than hot.”

Since that time, Matt has grown his Facebook following to more than 1.15 million followers. Oddly, Drudge’s official Twitter page only has two tweets as of this writing, the one found above and the one seen below. Drudge claimed that the DDoS attack has come from thousands of sources. He claims that none of those attacks can be traced from Fort Meade, presumably Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, the U. S. Army’s “preeminent center for information, intelligence and cyber.”

Drudge rode the wave of popularity, with folks being able to visit the Drudge Report to get a quick rundown of the day’s news. For example, as of this writing, the Drudge Report has links to articles about Donald Trump reportedly doing fewer Inaugural Balls, according to Breitbart, and the fact that Carrie Fisher’s autopsy is on hold, as reported by TMZ.

However, one of Drudge’s articles would land him in the middle of a lengthy lawsuit.

As seen in the above photo, Drudge appears reminiscent of the old-time journalists when he wore his signature hat outside of court on Wednesday, March 11, 1998. Drudge spoke with journalists in Washington following a hearing on a $30 million defamation suit that he had filed against him by Sidney Blumenthal, according to Vanity Fair. Blumenthal was the subject of an email newsletter that Matt sent to his readers in August of 1997. The Drudge Report pegged Blumenthal as a spouse abuser, and published the claims on America Online, one-time host of The Drudge Report. Drudge retracted the Blumenthal story and apologized, but was sued for libel, slander, and invasion of privacy — a case that ended in 2001 when the Blumenthals paid Matt’s attorney $2,500 to end the litigation and settle the case.

Meanwhile, people on social media are reacting to Matt’s claims that The Drudge Report is under attack. Some of the comments Drudge has received can be read below.

“DRUDGE Find out Matt. Prove it, publish it, expose them.”

“Same type of attack as what Infowars experienced? China?”

“You’re probably being attacked by coffee machines and refrigerators.”

[Featured Image by Michael Caulfield/AP Images]