Ted Cruz accused the Drudge Report of transforming into “an attack site” for Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s campaign in the past month, telling a conservative radio host this week that Drudge just promotes “whatever the Trump campaign is pushing that day.”

A POLITICO analysis of more than 300 Drudge banners this year reveals that Cruz has a strong argument: Matt Drudge’s conservative aggregation site has largely pushed banner pieces publicizing Trump favorably and in recent days either criticizing or deriding Cruz, a stark shift from 2015, when he appeared to be ambivalent toward the billionaire businessman.


Trump dominated the media after announcing his campaign last June, depriving most of his Republican rivals of the airtime and coverage necessary to run successful campaigns. But he was largely a bit player on Drudge Report in 2015, POLITICO reported on Jan. 1 after analyzing the latter half of last year in Drudge banners. The real estate mogul often played some role in whatever Drudge’s top story was, but the headlines were usually regarding his poll numbers or other indicators of his popularity — not a full-on embrace of his point of view.

This year, however, Drudge has gone all in on Trump. Examples range from a banner linking to a live Trump rally on Jan. 7 to full-spectrum treatment of the “firestorm” and “fury” regarding the nominating process in Colorado this past weekend — which Trump claimed was “rigged” in favor of Cruz.

Drudge, whose no-frills site is a top traffic referrer for many political news outlets, including POLITICO, highlighted headlines this weekend that embraced Trump’s narrative about Colorado’s convention system. On Saturday, linking to a Washington Post article about the delegate selection process, his website warned that “200 people could decide” Trump’s fate; he also bannered a POLITICO story detailing how Republican Party insiders were already grabbing delegates in Indiana, which doesn’t hold its primary until May.

On Sunday, Drudge responded to a mock Boston Globe front page predicting what April 9, 2017, would look like in a Trump administration (The Globe’s headlines included “Deportations to begin” and quoted President Trump pledging to deport undocumented immigrants “so fast your head will spin”), casting it as an example of the media intensifying its anti-Trump campaign.

While the Drudge Report hasn’t shied away from being critical of Cruz, it has blotted away Trump’s blemishes by pointing to other stories in lieu of Trump’s blunders. For example, when Trump incensed conservatives and anti-abortion groups by suggesting on March 30 that women be punished for having abortions — if the procedure were outlawed — Drudge instead focused on Sanders’ possible exclusion from the D.C. ballot. And when Trump refused to disavow the Ku Klux Klan in late February, it was instead Sen. Jeff Sessions’ endorsement of Trump that topped the site.

More recently, when Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was charged with simple battery late last month, Drudge, perhaps showing his skepticism of the impending verdict, put battery in quotations. A day later, the banner story shifted to the prosecutor in the case being a Hillary Clinton supporter.

By Monday, it seemed, Cruz had had enough. He slammed the Drudge Report for no longer covering news, pointing to his success in Colorado over the weekend as an example. The conservative recluse in the past two days has noted Cruz won all of the state’s delegates, but not without accentuating its controversy. “No primary, no caucus: Cruz gets all delegates,” Drudge’s headline read in its typical all-caps fashion, with “Voters not needed” below in red font.

“When we win a state, suddenly the state doesn’t matter,” Cruz groused. “You know Colorado — there was no red siren on Drudge when we won all 34 delegates in Colorado.”

But there was ridicule for the senator last Wednesday, when Drudge ran the headline “Cruz gets Bronx cheer” for a story regarding Cruz’s scant turnout at a campaign event in the New York borough.

Drudge on April 4 spotlighted Cruz’s delegate effort in Arizona as “Hell’s dels.” And on April 1, the site categorized voters as April fools, linking to a New York Times interactive graphic that illustrated how votes for Trump could transform into delegates for another candidate.

Cruz, however, did receive what’s at least a neutral banner last week when Drudge published poll results showing him and Bernie Sanders winning their respective primaries in Wisconsin.

But from January until now, banners have included stories exposing Cruz’s mothers’ birth certificate, which came amid Trump’s suggestion that Cruz could be constitutionally ineligible for the White House; Trump surrogate Sarah Palin blasting Cruz for “Dirty Politics” in Iowa; the Texas senator’s uphill battle to garner 87 percent of the remaining delegates in mid-March to secure the nomination outright; and Cruz’s advantage with key convention posts in Louisiana despite losing the state to Trump.

Cruz did get a banner for winning Kansas on March 5, but within the next week, Drudge was back at it again, mocking Cruz with the headline, “’Ted is the anointed one,’” linking to a story that labels Cruz a “Closet Pentecostal” rather than an evangelical Christian, and YouTube clips of his father saying Cruz is “anointed” and allegedly speaking in tongues.

“In about the past month the Drudge Report has basically become the attack site for the Donald Trump campaign,” Cruz summed it up Monday. “And so every day they have the latest Trump attack. They’re directed at me.”

Zach Montellaro contributed to this report.