It is not only Democrats, but often times sellout Republicans, who go after President Donald trump to increase their stock with the mainstream media.

That is what appears to have happened with conservative blogger Matt Drudge who has becoming increasingly hostile towards the president ever since his election.

Drudge, who became famous by taking on liberals, has appeared to want to curry favor with the mainstream, liberal media by taking swipes at the president.

On Saturday President Trump hit back at the powerful blogger whose “Drudge Report” has been required reading for the conservative brain trust.

“I gave up on Drudge (a really nice guy) long ago, as have many others. People are dropping off like flies!” the president said in a tweet.

Hit tweet came in response to another tweet, this one by Paul Sperry, a former D.C. bureau chief for Investor’s Business Daily, who derided Drudge.

“DISINGENUOUS DRUDGE: Headline ‘NO PEAK YET: U.S. deaths set single-day record’ is sensationalistic & misleading,” Sperry said.

“Deaths are a LAGGING indicator, by weeks. Daily new US cases of COVID-19 peaked April 4. New cases have been rolling over ever since. Deaths will follow the downtrend,” he said.

This is true, but news outlets like Drudge know that sensationalizing headlines gets more attention and more eyes on them, which is essentially what Drudge admitted when he responded to the president.

“The past 30 days has been the most eyeballs in Drudge Report’s 26 year-history,” he said in an email to CNN. “Heartbreaking that it has been under such tragic circumstances.”

The Drudge Report, founded in 1995, is arguably the most influential conservative news website. Drudge rarely reports or writes stories himself. Rather, he and his site serve as an aggregator, linking to other news organizations — and often providing them with large volumes of traffic.

Drudge supported Trump during the 2016 presidential election and in the early days of the Trump presidency was even a frequent visitor to the White House. But since the summer of 2019, the Drudge Report has spotlighted a significant amount of negative news about the Trump.

It’s unclear what precisely caused the shift in the Drudge Report’s coverage. A person close to Drudge himself told CNN in October 2019 that he had grown exasperated with the President.

It is telling that, of all the media sources Drudge could have responded to with his statement, he chose the president’s, and conservatives’ nemesis network CNN.

Is Drudge doing what other Republicans have done since the president’s election and eyeing a spot as a paid contributor on CNN?

It is anyone’s guess, but he has started to become more like those Never Trumpers than he has been a conservative voice.

And it is more telling when even someone like Democrat host of the HBO show “Real Time,” Bill Maher, appears to be more in line with the president than Drudge is.

“Now that we’re starting to see some hope in all this, don’t hope-shame me,” he said. “You know, the problem with nonstop gloom and doom is it gives Trump the chance to play the optimist, and optimists tend to win American elections.”

“FDR said, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’ You know, as full of s–t as he is, I could see Trump riding that into a second term.”

“So, look, if this insanity happens again, news sources have to rein it in. Everyone knows Corona is no walk in the park. Because you literally can’t walk in the park. But at some point, the daily drumbeat of depression and terror veers into panic porn,” he added. “Enough with the ‘life will never be the same’ headlines. … Everything looks scary when you magnified it a thousand times.”

“Giving the proper perspective isn’t a cover-up of the truth. It is the truth… We need the news to calm down and treat us like adults… Trump calls you fake news. Don’t make him be right.”

But he is correct. Maher knows it and so does Drudge. That is why he continues with his sensationalized headlines that make him profit.