The Drudge Report has aggressively portrayed Ted Cruz’s sweep of all the delegates from Colorado’s Republican convention as a corrupt power grab.
The site named for and run by Matt Drudge, who broke the story of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, links to nine stories Tuesday morning with salacious headlines about the convention. Among them: “Savage: Cruz should disavow rigged Colorado election … Buchanan: Apparatchiks thieve delegates for Ted … 1 MILLION REPUBLICANS SIDELINED … Border Patrol Agents: Colorado Voters Disenfranchised.” Keep in mind that this is three days after the Colorado convention.
This kind of squabbling will only get louder as the delegate wrestling and wrangling intensifies. And it has clearly gotten under Cruz’s skin.
In a radio interview Monday, the Texas senator ripped into Drudge as an arm of Donald Trump’s campaign. “In about the past month, the Drudge Report has basically become the attack site for the Trump campaign,” he told conservative host Mike Slater. “So every day they have the latest Trump attack. They’re directed at me. … Most days they have a six-month-old article that is some attack on me, and it’s whatever the Trump campaign is pushing that day will be the banner headline on Drudge.”
“By the way, they no longer cover news,” Cruz added of Drudge. “When we win a state, suddenly the state doesn’t matter. You know Colorado – there was no red siren on Drudge when we won all 34 delegates in Colorado.”
Drudge responded by posting a link to a January Fox News interview in which Cruz praised the conservative site for breaking the mainstream media’s “stranglehold.”
It’s never good to pick a fight with a guy who buys ink by the barrel, as they say. Or whatever the 2016 version of that line is.
If it was just Trump complaining about the “crooked” system, it would seem like sour grapes from a guy who got out-hustled. But Trump’s allies in the right-wing media, including Drudge and Breitbart, are trying to make Cruz’s wins seem illegitimate in the eyes of the conservative base. If Cruz wins the nomination at a contested convention in Cleveland, he will need these grassroots activists to rally around him. If regular Drudge readers believe he did not win fair and square, they will be less inclined to do so.
Interestingly, the increasing scrutiny from Drudge comes as the Democratic National Committee begins to train more of its fire at Cruz. After focusing almost single-mindedly on Trump for months, the DNC held a press call Monday to blast the Texan ahead of campaign stops in California.
Ironically, they pushed a similar message as Drudge: “Cruz’s campaign is proving to be just as divisive for the Republican Party as his tenure in the Senate has been for our country,” said the DNC communications director. “That’s why there just isn’t a whole lot of excitement for Cruz being the Republican nominee.”
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · James Hohmann
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3 Responses
All winner take all states don’t show “the will of the people” just ask florida
Drudge has been showing his stripes during this election cycle as have too many other people whom we count on fire neutrality.
The fact is that Trump has been in “es kimt mir” mode since day one without knowing or understanding HOW the process REALLY works. Just because the primary/caucus is over in the state doesn’t mean the job is done there.
Here’s hoping they kiss and make up when Cruz wins the nomination.
THERE WILL NEVER ME A MAKE UP CRUZ IS A SLIME HE LIES. DID YOU NOTICE THAT MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT CRUZ BECAUSE THE MEDIA DOESN’T DO ITS JOB HOWEVER WHENEVER TRUMP SNEEZES HE IS CRITICIZED FOR IT. WAKE UP THE MAN HAS SOLD HIS SOUL TO ALL THE SUPER PACS WHERE DO YOU THINK HE IS GETTING HIS MONEY. he has a long list of paybacks HE IS JUST As corrupt as all the republican party “heads” whether you like it or not Trump is the one ringing all the bells from islam to illigels to everyone ripping us off to all the middle class that is being crushed with taxes.
YOU WAKE UP