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Original Drudge Reports Of Monica Lewinsky Scandal
These are the original Drudge Report items that revealed the identity of Monica Lewinsky and her relationship with President Bill Clinton.
x x x x x Web Posted: 01/17/98 21:32:02 PST — NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN X X X X X BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT ————————————————————————————————————— Web Posted: 01/17/98 23:32:47 PST — NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT **World Exclusive** **Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT** At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States! The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president’s sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until last month. The young intern wrote long love letters to President Clinton, which she delivered through a delivery service. She was a frequent visitor at the White House after midnight, where she checked in the WAVE logs as visiting a secretary named Betty Curry, 57. The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that tapes of intimate phone conversations exist. The relationship between the president and the young woman become strained when the president believed that the young woman was bragging about the affair to others. NEWSWEEK and Isikoff were planning to name the woman. Word of the story’s impeding release caused blind chaos in media circles; TIME magazine spent Saturday scrambling for its own version of the story, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. The NEW YORK POST on Sunday was set to front the young intern’s affair, but was forced to fall back on the dated ABC NEWS Kathleen Willey break. The story was set to break just hours after President Clinton testified in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. Ironically, several years ago, it was Isikoff that found himself in a shouting match with editors who were refusing to publish even a portion of his meticulously researched investigative report that was to break Paula Jones. Isikoff worked for the WASHINGTON POST at the time, and left shortly after the incident to build them for the paper’s sister magazine, NEWSWEEK. Michael Isikoff was not available for comment late Saturday. NEWSWEEK was on voice mail. The White House was busy checking the DRUDGE REPORT for details. ————————————————————————————————————— Web Posted: 01/18/98 22:33:48 PST — FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN CALLED; NEW BACKGROUND DETAILS EMERGE **World Exclusive** **Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT** The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, 23, has been subpoenaed to give a deposition in the Paula Jones case. About the young woman, this is known: WORK EXPERIENCE *Summer of 1995 Intern, Office of Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, The White House. *November 1995 Staff assistant, Office of Legislative Affairs, The White House. “Wrote drafts and correspondence for Staff Secretary’s approval and ultimately the President’s signature. Processed and vetted all incoming mail to the President from Congress.” *April 1996 Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, The Pentagon. EDUCATION May 95 Lewis and Clark College. Major: Psychology. MISC. Holds current TS-SCI clearance, allowing access to top secret and sensitive information. Proficient in Macintosh for Microsoft Word 6.0, WordPerfect for Windows, and Infosys. ————————————————————————————————————— Web Posted: 01/19/98 14:54:06 PST — FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN DENIES SEX WITH PRESIDENT IN SWORN AFFIDAVIT **World Exclusive** **Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT** Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, 23, has denied having any “sexual relationship with President Clinton” in a sworn affidavit, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. Lewinsky’s sworn written statement was executed last week after she was served with a subpoena in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. NBC was busy developing a story Tuesday afternoon on Lewinsky. Through a suspected leak, the network obtained a copy of Lewinsky’s affidavit and was reading portions of it to sources to provoke comment. ————————————————————————————————————— Web Posted: 01/20/98 18:07:47 PST — TONIGHT ON THE DRUDGE REPORT: CONTROVERSY SWIRLS AROUND TAPES OF FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, AS STARR MOVES IN! … ————————————————————————————————————— Web Posted: 01/20/98 19:57:07 PST — CONTROVERSY SWIRLS AROUND TAPES OF FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, AS STARR MOVES IN! **World Exclusive** **Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT** Federal investigators are now in possession of intimate taped conversations of a former White House intern, age 23, discussing details of her alleged sexual relationship with President Clinton, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. The tapes were made by a federal employee who has been granted immunity. MORE According to sources in and out of government, Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr became involved in the situation when he received intelligence that senior administration officials may have offered federal jobs to a young woman in an effort to prevent stories from going public — stories involving sexual episodes that allegedly occurred in a room off the Oval Office. “Starr is not on the bimbo beat,” one source close to the situation told the DRUDGE REPORT late Tuesday. “He’s looking at a potential for obstruction of justice charges.” A breakfast meeting that took place at The Watergate Hotel has attracted the attention of investigators. The development has completely consumed high-level Washington, with Starr’s investigators working past midnight in recent days. Developing… ————————————————————————————————————— Web Posted: 01/20/98 22:09:23 PST — WASH POST SCREAMS INTERN STORY! ————————————————————————————————————— Web Posted: 01/21/98 11:32:53 PST — ~~LEWINSKY NIGHTMARE CONTINUES~~ U.N. AMBASSADOR RICHARDSON OFFERED ME A JOB DURING BREAKFAST MEETING AT WATERGATE HOTEL, SHE SAID; INVESTIGATORS PROBE POSSIBILITY OF CLINTON DNA… MOVING SOON ON THE DRUDGE REPORT X X X X ————————————————————————————————————— Web Posted: 01/21/98 12:56:27 PST — WATERGATE 1998 **WORLD EXCLUSIVE** **MUST CREDIT THE DRUDGE REPORT** **CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS** REPORT: LEWINSKY OFFERED U.N. JOB; INVESTIGATORS: DNA TRAIL MAY EXIST U.N. AMBASSADOR RICHARDSON OFFERED ME A JOB DURING A BREAKFAST MEETING AT THE WATERGATE HOTEL — WORDS WHITE HOUSE INTERN MONICA LEWINSKY, 24, ALLEGEDLY TOLD PENTAGON WORKER LINDA TRIPP LATE IN DECEMBER 1997. THE OFFER CAME AS LEWINSKY WAS ASKING TO RETURN TO THE WHITE HOUSE, THE DRUDGE REPORT HAS LEARNED, UNHAPPY IN THE PENTAGON JOB SHE HELD — A JOB THAT SHE STARTED IN APRIL 1996 AFTER BEING RELEASED FROM A WHITE HOUSE POSITION. “THEY WANTED HER OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE DURING THE ELECTION,” A SOURCE CLOSE TO THE INVESTIGATION TELLS THE DRUDGE REPORT. AMBASSADOR RICHARDSON WAS NOT AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT. WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY MIKE MCCURRY OFFERED NOTHING WHEN ASKED ABOUT THE ALLEGED RICHARDSON JOB OFFER DURING WEDNESDAY’S PRESS BRIEFING. SEPARATELY, THE DRUDGE REPORT HAS LEARNED, INVESTIGATORS HAVE BECOME CONVINCED THAT THERE MAY BE A DNA TRAIL THAT COULD CONFIRM PRESIDENT CLINTON’S SEXUAL INVOLVEMENT WITH LEWINSKY, A RELATIONSHIP THAT WAS CAPTURED IN LEWINSKY’S OWN VOICE ON AUDIO TAPE. TRIPP HAS SHARED WITH INVESTIGATORS A CONVERSATION WHERE LEWINSKY ALLEGEDLY CONFIDED THAT SHE KEPT A GARMENT WITH CLINTON’S DRIED SEMEN ON IT — A GARMENT SHE SAID SHE WOULD NEVER WASH!
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Matt Drudge’s Impeachment: American Crime Story Debut and Strange Origin Story
By Julie Miller
Matt Drudge makes a dramatic debut in Impeachment: American Crime Story ’s third episode, “Not to Be Believed,” which premieres Tuesday night on FX. The character does not get an introduction so much as a down-and-dirty origin story. In the episode’s opening scene, set in 1995, Drudge (played by Billy Eichner ) manages the gift shop at CBS Studios. The character is lit and scripted like a screen villain—perhaps not surprising, given the show’s creators have said the true crime of Impeachment is the way Monica Lewinsky , Linda Tripp , and Paula Jones were maligned by media.
During the five-minute opening sequence, Drudge locks up the gift shop, throws on a trench coat, digs sensitive information out from a studio dumpster, and returns to his small, drab apartment to publish the biggest scoop of his career at that point: Jerry Seinfeld ’s negotiations for $1 million per episode. Three years later, Drudge would eclipse that news story with a political bombshell—breaking news of Bill Clinton ’s affair with a White House intern.
Ahead, a closer look at Drudge’s real-life beginnings and his role in making Clinton and Lewinsky’s affair the scandal spectacular that it became.
These days, Drudge is known for being a “mysterious media maven, conservative kingmaker, and arguably the most influential news aggregator in history,” according to a Vanity Fair feature last year. But in the early ’90s, his résumé was considerably less impressive.
Drudge grew up in the Maryland suburbs and graduated from high school 341st out of 355 students in 1984, according to Matthew Lysiak ’s The Drudge Revolution. While many of his peers went to college, Drudge spent the following years drifting aimlessly between jobs like 7-Eleven night manager, telemarketer, and McDonald’s team member.
“Drudge’s father ultimately changed his life,” wrote New York magazine in 2007. “After high school, [Drudge] drifted to his father’s hometown, Los Angeles, where he worked for years in the gift shop at CBS studios. Worried about his son’s aimlessness, Bob Drudge insisted on buying him a Packard-Bell computer in 1994. The Drudge Report began as an e-mail sent out to a few friends.”
The Drudge Report started taking off in March 1995, and Drudge’s “first big break came straight out of the garbage” while he was working at CBS Studios, according to The Drudge Revolution:
Matt had been searching through the trash cans on the ground-floor Xerox room when he discovered the previous day’s Nielsen ratings, not yet released to the public, discarded below piles of trash.… For Matt, it was information gold, even if he didn’t exactly know what to do with the pilfered information. Matt studied the schedule of the cleaning crew. He learned there was a short window of time in the morning after the Nielsen numbers were tossed into the garbage by the executive suits and before the crew would arrive to shred it. Matt took his dumpster-diving routine elsewhere—including to Daily Variety. He began posting the Nielsen ratings and other tidbits of information he learned on various internet newsgroups, including pilfering Friday night’s box office take for newly released movies, which he would release the very next day, ahead of the studios.
Tuesday’s episode also flashes back to a trip Drudge made to the capitol—which Jeffrey Toobin described in his book A Vast Conspiracy, on which Impeachment is based. The trip would include a fateful conversation with Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff ( Danny A. Jacobs ), who was on the Clinton sexual harassment beat. While Drudge had been digging scoops out of the trash, Isikoff was operating on the opposite end of the reporting-morality spectrum—vetting sources and declining access to illegally recorded audio . Toobin writes:
In late June 1997, Matt Drudge visited Washington at a time when his celebrity was still rather modest. Two years earlier, Drudge had started posting various news items and gossip—mostly early reports of weekend movie grosses along with occasional news of show business contract disputes—on the fledgling World Wide Web. His popularity grew with that of the Internet, and Drudge soon developed a following in the tens of thousands, especially among journalists. Drudge wrote with a cranky anti-Clinton slant, but his juicy tidbits and old-time tabloid style made his intermittently reliable Drudge Report a must-read in political and media circles. By the time he toured Newsweek ’s offices, in the summer of 1997, he could promenade through them like a visiting dignitary. (On the same trip to Washington, Drudge was a guest of honor at a dinner thrown by the ubiquitous David Brock. ) In a conversation with Drudge at Newsweek, Isikoff accidentally confirmed that he was working on an article about a possible act of sexual harassment by the president in the White House.
By Tara Ariano
By Savannah Walsh
By Chris Murphy
In May 1997, The Washington Post formally introduced Drudge to the world in a profile entitled “The Dirt on Matt Drudge” :
He’s a one-man media machine, an obsessive gossip who cheerfully pleads guilty to occasional unethical behavior. He’s a 30-year-old Takoma Park native whose last job was managing the CBS gift shop in Studio City, Calif. He describes his gig this way: “I don’t have an editor. I can write whatever I want and 50,000-plus readers will see it within an hour.” Matt Drudge would be possible only in the age of Web-surfing. From a cluttered apartment near Hollywood and Vine, he cranks out a World Wide Web site called the Drudge Report (www.drudgereport.com), a strange brew of media, political and show biz tidbits that has drawn all kinds of fans in high places.
Though Drudge had a reputation for being hit-or-miss with its news breaks—he incorrectly reported that Microsoft was buying Netscape, and that Independence Day would bomb at the box office, according to The Drudge Revolution —he managed to break the Clinton affair news.
On January 17, 1998, Drudge published the story with the headline “NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN:”
At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States! The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president's sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until last month. The young intern wrote long love letters to President Clinton, which she delivered through a delivery service. She was a frequent visitor at the White House after midnight, where she checked in the WAVE logs as visiting a secretary named Betty Curry, 57. The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that tapes of intimate phone conversations exist. The relationship between the president and the young woman become strained when the president believed that the young woman was bragging about the affair to others.
The story set off a full-on media frenzy around the Clinton White House on par with the press circus around Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Days later, The Washington Post , the Los Angeles Times and ABC radio followed with their own reporting that Kenneth Starr was investigating whether Clinton and his friend Vernon Jordan encouraged Lewinsky to lie to lawyers for Paula Jones about whether she had an affair with the president.
Incredibly, this was not the first time that Drudge scooped Isikoff. Drudge previously beat the Newsweek reporter to breaking the allegations that Clinton made advances towards another White House aide, Kathleen Willey. Speaking to press after breaking the Lewinsky-Clinton affair news, Drudge acknowledged his own controversial tactics in scooping Isikoff.
“There’s something in the culture of Washington where reporters share their stories, and now there’s an outlet, meaning me,” said Drudge. “Before we all talked about it, but who’s going to print it? … This thing just fell into my lap.”
The article not only opened the floodgates for political attacks, it also marked another important turning point. Per Toobin’s A Vast Conspiracy, “By launching the story into the public discourse via the Internet, Drudge’s post announced a fundamental reordering of our media hierarchies, a process that has only accelerated in subsequent years.”
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This article was published more than 5 years ago
Twenty years ago, the Drudge Report broke the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal
JAN. 17, 1998 On this day, the gossip and news aggregation site Drudge Report carried an item that Newsweek was sitting on a story about President Bill Clinton's relationship with a former White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. That scoop-of-a-scoop set off a media frenzy that marked the start of the Clinton scandal that would consume much of the rest of Clinton's presidency. On Jan. 21, The Washington Post and other news outlets ran their own stories on the relationship between the president and the intern, which Clinton denied. Much hand-wringing then ensued about whether "the furious pace of the coverage ... has all but shattered traditional media standards," Howard Kurtz wrote in The Post on Jan. 27. Clinton appeared before a grand jury in August. And the House later impeached him for lying under oath and obstructing justice to cover up the affair. The Senate then acquitted him. The Drudge Report remains an influential site, drawing millions of page views each month. One of its former editors, the late Andrew Breitbart , went on to start the conservative news site Breitbart.com.
— Annys Shin
Matt Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story 20 years ago today
Matt Drudge in 1997. Photo: Amy Etra / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Images
20 years ago today, back in 1998, Matt Drudge posted his most famous siren banner: "NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN." Drudge's own anniversary posting includes the 1998 headline: "Arrival of the digital age."
Simpler times: A week later, the BBC reported: "[I]t was in the wilds of cyberspace — not the morning newspaper — that the story of Bill Clinton's alleged affair with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, first unfolded...In the future, academics, politicians and journalists aren't likely to dismiss the Internet so quickly."
What Is the Infamous Monica Lewinsky Cigar Scandal?
- By Sara Donnellan
- Updated Sep 7, 2021 at 10:10pm
Getty Monica Lewinsky's story is reexamined in "Impeachment: American Crime Story."
“Impeachment: American Crime Story” aims to paint a more nuanced portrait of the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and the resulting impeachment process.
As the center of a salacious national news story, Lewinsky endured public shaming at the hands of the press. Today, she is an anti-bullying social activist. Her TED Talk, “ The Price of Shame ,” has more than 12 million views on YouTube.
Lewinsky is an executive producer of “Impeachment: American Crime Story.” According to an NPR review , some of the titillating details that the press fixated on in the late ’90s are missing from the television series. There are “only passing references to that blue dress” and no sex scenes – especially none with cigars.
So, what’s the real story behind the cigar that made headlines during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal?
The Cigar Scandal Explained
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Beanie Feldstein (@beaniefeldstein)
Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s report to the House on President Bill Clinton includes testimony from Lewinsky about a sexual encounter involving a cigar. According to the testimony, Clinton inserted a cigar into Lewinsky’s vagina during an encounter on March 31, 1996. Clinton then put the cigar in his mouth and said, “It tastes good,” according to the report.
Rumors about Lewinsky’s testimony, specifically the cigar anecdote, began to swirl in August 1998. The first publication to mention the cigar was The Drudge Report , a conservative-leaning news aggregation website founded by Matt Drudge .
The Drudge Report story also claimed that Yasser Arafat was waiting for the president in the Rose Garden while the encounter took place inside The White House. According to the Pew Research Center , nothing in the Starr Report supports this claim.
“Impeachment: American Crime Story” doesn’t depict this infamous cigar rendezvous, nor any other sex scenes. The show’s writer Sarah Burgess told The Wrap this was an easy decision for her. She felt that Americans already knew enough about the graphic sexual details of the case.
Burgess said depicting sex scenes “never felt like the move to me. And I don’t remember … any intensive discussions about doing it another way.”
‘Impeachment’ Features Another Infamous Incident
View this post on Instagram A post shared by American Crime Story FX (@americancrimestoryfx)
Although there won’t be sex scenes, “Impeachment: American Crime Story” does feature another infamous incident: Lewinsky lifting her jacket to give Clinton a glimpse of her thong while at a party at the Chief of Staff’s office.
Writer Burgess initially kept the moment out of the script for fear of upsetting Lewinsky, but Lewinsky insisted on including it.
“Listen, I would’ve loved to have been really selfish and said, ‘That’s great that you guys think we don’t have to show that, fantastic,’ but I’m incredibly experienced in understanding how people see this story,” Lewinsky told The Hollywood Reporter . “So, ultimately, I felt two things: One was that I shouldn’t get a pass because I’m a producer; and two, that it was unfair to the team and to the project because it would leave everybody vulnerable.”
“Impeachment: American Crime Story” premieres on September 7 at 10 p.m. Eastern time on FX. New episodes will air weekly. Episodes will also be available on Hulu the day after their premiere.
READ NEXT: ‘Impeachment: American Crime Story’ Cast & Spoilers
Is this a musical? I love a good musical!
Aw stop complaining , pull up your big girl pants and suck it up……. Oops she did.
From the actual Starr Report and Supporting Documents
“At one point, the President inserted a cigar into Ms. Lewinsky’s vagina, then put the cigar in his mouth and said: “It tastes good.”(274) After they were finished, Ms. Lewinsky left the Oval Office and walked through the Rose Garden.(275)”
Clever tactic. The ‘no cigar’ headline on Drudge is false. The inaccuracy referred to is Arafat’s presence outside.
What do you mean it’s incorrect? The story proves it IS correct. The story states there will be “no cigar” story depicted in the show. She stated everyone is already aware of it. So, it is correct.
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Drudge says Newsweek sitting on Lewinsky story, Jan. 17, 1998
The Drudge Report broke the story about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair 15 years ago Thursday.
By Andrew Glass
01/17/2013 04:45 AM EST
On this day in 1998, the Drudge Report carried an item on its website alleging that Newsweek magazine was sitting on a story exposing an affair between President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, a 22-year-old White House intern.
Ten days later, Clinton, with his wife beside him, told reporters: “… I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people. Thank you.”
The next day, Hillary Clinton said on NBC’s “Today” show: “The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”
On July 28, Lewinsky received transactional immunity from Kenneth Starr, an independent counsel who had been named by a three-judge panel, freeing her to tell grand jurors about her relationship with Clinton. She also turned over a semen-stained blue dress to investigators that provided DNA evidence undermining Clinton’s earlier denials. At the urging of Lewinsky’s friend, Linda Tripp, the dress had not been dry-cleaned.
Clinton admitted to grand jurors on Aug. 17 that he had had an “improper physical relationship” with Lewinsky. That evening, he said on national television that his relationship with Lewinsky was “not appropriate.”
The House, dividing along largely partisan lines, impeached Clinton on Dec. 19, 1998. The issue then went to the Senate, where after a five-week trial, he was acquitted.
SOURCE: WWW. CNN.COM, CHRONOLOGY: KEY MOMENTS IN THE CLINTON-LEWINSKY SAGA
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Why is Drudge Report Black and White? We Investigate Matt’s DrudgeReport.com
It’s happened again. Drudge has switched back to the black and white image format on DrudgeReport.com , a look he seems to take up every few years on his news aggregating behemoth — long considered one, if not the most influential news site in the country. So what caused Drudge Report to take on the classic, somber black and white aesthetic? Let’s dive in-
When did Drudge Report become Black and White?
The change happened sometime between Thursday Jan. 12 and Friday Jan. 13, first with a black and white photo announcing the death of Lisa Marie Presley, with photos accompanying other stories remaining in color.
DrudgeReport.com, Jan. 12, 2023
By later in the day Friday, all the photos on the site had become black and white, and the aesthetic has remained that way for almost a week now.
DrudgeReport.com, Jan. 13, 2023
Drudge has gone B&W in the past — in 2017 and 2020 to our recollection.
The 2017 round started around Aug. 8 and lasted til Aug. 31.
DrudgeReport.com, Aug. 8, 2017
DrudgeReport.com again went black and white around Dec. 8, 2020 , but that only lasted a few days, reverting back to color by Dec. 12, 2020.
DrudgeReport.com, Dec. 9, 2020
Why did Drudge Report go Black and White?
When this happened back in 2017 , Mike Allen of Axios reached out to Drudge and got an instant response:
“We have clearly entered a historic era. It’s feeling like The Roaring 20’s this autumn with tech valuations at such hysterical heights. The socials, like Instagram Live, are alive with the spirit of Warhol. The sound of the atom splitting is looming over Korea. What’s old is new. So, black and white and read all over!” -Matt Drudge, Aug. 2017
At the time, Drudge ran the headline “NUKE YOU” with a picture of Kim Jong-un overseeing a what looks to a nuclear launch — signifying a time of flaring tempers between North Korea and the west.
The 2020 B&W run coincided with the release of the covid-19 vaccine — but it’s hard to know what about that time Drudge found particularly historic. Maybe he was foreseeing widespread adoption of the jab to be momentous for history.
With this 2023 round, Lisa Marie Presley’s death is our biggest clue. Drudge has long had an affinity for female singers and pop stars, most notably Lana Del Rey, who the site fixates on and boosts. Both Adele and Britney Spears have been the subject of significant coverage.
Drudge seems to find great dramatic value and fanfare in these oft tragic singers. Presley’s photo captioned “LIFE OF TRAGEDY” may mean the death really impacted Drudge.
Our speculation is these black and white ventures are Drudge’s version of Picasso’s Blue Period, which focused on somber colors to reflect a dour mood.
Or maybe Drudge, with all his newsy instincts and foresight, is subtly pinpointing this moment as us entering another “historic era.”
Wait, what is the Drudge Report and why does this matter?
Matt Drudge started Drudge Report as an insider newsletter that shared gossipy, sometimes hard to find info like TV ratings. He rose to prominence with his role in breaking the Bill Clinton / Monica Lewinsky scandal in the late 90s, becoming the go-to news site for many on the political right.
Since then, DrudgeReport.com has been one of the most visited sites on the web, garnering billions of page views a year, and is often ranked in the top 10 most visited news sites in the U.S., beating out many establishment competitors.
While most news sites go through design overhauls every few years, Drudge Report has remained nearly unchanged in its over 20 years of operation, and its design been the subject of a lot of conversation.
Matt Drudge himself is notoriously reclusive, alleged to live and run his site from Florida. Little is known about the innerworkings of DrudgeReport.com, but apparently it’s a small team — this Tablet writeup explores it a little.
Drudge is presumed to still be at the helm, but rumors online have suggested he sold the site sometime in 2019, according to a tweet by conservative leaning pollster Rassmussen Reports.
Drudge was highly influential in building energy around the Trump campaign in 2015-16 but seemed to turn against the former president later in his term, with many conservative figures claiming he’s abandoned the right.
Still, he recently ranked number 7 on Mediaite’s Most Influential in News Media 2022 list. And while other media figures have had their time in the limelight and have since faded, the lore of Drudge only grows, with two Matt Drudge biopics alleged to be in the works.
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The true story behind the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman"
THIS IS NOT A DRILL. After the teaser trailer for Impeachment: American Crime Story dropped last month, we've been patiently waiting for the show itself to air – and finally, the wait is nearly over (we think). The show is set to air in the US on 7 September, meaning hopefully a UK date isn't too far behind...
Back in 2019, it was announced that the third season of the Emmy-winning Ryan Murphy series would be focusing on the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky affair that dominated headlines in the 90s.
Based on Jeffrey Toobin's 2000 book A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President , the series will dive into the true story of Clinton and Lewinsky. The best part? Lewinsky herself will serve as an executive producer on the series, which represents a long-overdue chance for her to tell her own story.
Unfamiliar with the sex scandal that shook the US? Here’s the TL;DR version of the Clinton and Lewinsky scandal...
What was the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal?
Back in the summer of 1995, a 21-year-old Monica Lewinsky obtained a position as a White House intern through a family friend and relocated to Washington DC. Within a few months, she embarked on an affair with then-President Bill Clinton, who was very much married to Hillary Rodham Clinton . The Clintons share a daughter, Chelsea, too.
A year on, Lewinsky confided about her relationship with Clinton to a co-worker, Linda Tripp, who - twelve months on from that, in the autumn of 1997 - secretly recorded the confessional telephone calls.
Then on 13 January 1998 , Tripp allegedly went a step further and was wired by FBI agents. She met with Lewinsky at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel bar in Pentagon City, Virginia, to record another conversation about the affair.
Weeks later, the scandal was covered by news website The Drudge Report and subsequently blew up in the mainstream press.
President Clinton then denied everything in a now-infamous interview (26 January 1998), stating that the allegations were false and delivered his well-known line of "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky".
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton made several statements to the press supporting her husband too, once saying in a broadcast interview that a "vast right-wing conspiracy" is behind the charges against her husband (who was also accused of groping another staffer, Kathleen Willey, around the same time as the affair leaked – something he strongly denied).
However, by the July of 1998, Lewinsky received total witness immunity in exchange for a grand jury testament about her relationship with Clinton, and a few weeks later, Clinton finally admitted to the affair as well. DNA evidence obtained from a dark blue dress worn by Lewinsky confirmed that the pair had indeed had a physical relationship.
On the 11 September 1998, Clinton delivered a speech addressing the affair at a White House Prayer breakfast, attended my many notable figures including his wife, and said that he had 'sinned' and asked for forgiveness.
"I have been on quite a journey these last few weeks to get to the end of this, to the rock bottom truth of where I am and where we all are," he told the room. "I agree with those who have said that in my first statement after I testified I was not contrite enough. I don't think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned.
"It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine: first and most important, my family; also my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family, and the American people. I have asked all for their forgiveness."
By December 1998, Clinton was impeached on the grounds of perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. However, he was acquitted and never removed from office.
Where is Monica Lewinsky now?
While Clinton remained a popular president until 2001, Lewinsky was publicly shamed on a global scale. Lewinsky, who was just 25 by the time she was revealed as Clinton's mistress wrote for Vanity Fair in 2014 about her experience. "Thanks to the Drudge Report, I was also possibly the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the internet." Later on, in her 2015 Ted Talk 'The Price of Shame', Lewinsky further discussed her experiences with public shaming.
Since then, Lewinsky has also spoken at a number of conferences, highlighting the injustice of her experience and is now an anti-bullying activist. She’s also now serving as an executive producer on Impeachment: American Crime Story.
Lewinsky explained that "people have been co-opting and telling my part in this story for decades. In fact, it wasn't until the past few years that I've been able to fully reclaim my narrative; almost 20 years later." And, we’re excited to see what she has to say.
Where is Bill Clinton now?
Clinton remains married to his wife Hillary , who also ran for US president against Donald Trump in 2016. He was heavily involved with her campaign trail. The former President keeps an office in New York City and maintains an active speaking schedule.
When is Impeachment: American Crime Story out in the UK?
Between Impeachment: American Crime Story and House of Gucci , 2021 truly is the golden age for bingeable biopics. American Crime Story: Impeachment premieres on FX in the US on 7 September 2021. A UK release date is yet to be confirmed.
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Meet the Former Gift Shop Manager-Turned-Internet Personality Who Broke Clinton's Lewinsky Affair
The founder of the popular news aggregator drudge report is known to give few interviews and has grown increasingly reclusive.
Politics Writer - PEOPLE
Matt Drudge played a pivotal role in the scandal that engulfed Bill Clinton 's administration (and the country) in 1998 — breaking the story of an affair with Monica Lewinsky that would nearly take down the president .
But before Drudge was an influential conservative media personality and Internet publisher, he was managing the gift shop at CBS Studios in Los Angeles, emailing bits of Hollywood insider gossip to friends.
His information, he later said , came from "scoops from the sound stages I had heard" and his "friends" in politics.
Those emailed notes, known as the Drudge Report, would grow in popularity over the years, eventually covering headlines (and the writer's opinions) on both show business and politics. The hobby was unsurprising, considering his upbringing. As he wrote in his 2000 autobiography Drudge Manifesto , his mother had worked as a member of the legal staff for Sen. Ted Kennedy while his father — also a former federal worker — had founded the website refdesk.com , which was sold in 2017.
(Drudge dedicated that book, coincidentally, to Linda Tripp , the former White House and Pentagon staffer who secretly recorded her phone calls with Lewinsky and ultimately turned them over to an independent counsel.)
His subscription base grew after he published a story that Jerry Seinfeld was seeking $1 million per episode of his hit sitcom. That led to new opportunities — in 1996, as New York magazine previously reported , Drudge got a job writing for Wired and, later, for America Online.
Those jobs came and went and by 1997, his Drudge Report emails had amassed some 85,000 subscribers. That's when Drudge landed the biggest story of his career: Newsweek , he said, had uncovered an affair between President Bill Clinton and an intern named Monica Lewinsky — but the magazine had killed the story.
Drudge ran his article about Newsweek on Jan. 17, 1998. A day later, he published a follow-up, this time with Lewinsky's name.
The story went everywhere , making Lewinsky a household name nearly overnight and further fueling the investigation that led to Clinton's impeachment in the House of Representatives. It also led to years of high traffic to Drudge's website and years of fame and notoriety for Drudge himself, a political outsider who had somehow landed the biggest story in all of politics.
His origin story was detailed in this week's episode of the FX drama Impeachment: American Crime Story , which follows the affair between Lewinsky (played by Beanie Feldstein ) and Clinton ( Clive Owen ).
Drudge is played by Billy Eichner, who told The Daily Beast that while "our politics could not be further apart," he was fascinated by Drudge. He called it "a great role."
Drudge's Hollywood portrayal traces back to the attention from his bombshell Lewinsky report, which landed him spots on radio (he previously had his own show and would occasionally guest-host for the late conservative icon Rush Limbaugh) as well as an eponymous show on Fox News.
The Fox program would be short-lived, running from June 1998 to November 1999, and ending when Drudge and the network got into a disagreement about a segment on abortion.
Still a frequently-updated site, the Drudge Report's website design remains simplistic: nothing more than series of black and white headlines and a few color photos along with Drudge-written commentary and headlines.
But the site's influence on media can't be understated, as it ushered in a new era and style of reporting. And years later, it still remains a go-to aggregator for figures in politics and media because a reference or link on Drudge's website still drives notable readers ( even if those figures have softened ).
The site set the tone for conservative media in other ways, as well. One of Drudge's early employees, Andrew Breitbart, went on to found the far-right website Breitbart News before he died in 2012 .
Drudge is now 54 years old and has never offered up his Clinton-Lewinsky source or explained how he found out about the affair.
He rarely speaks to media outlets at all and has grown more and more reclusive. In the past, though, he has been forthcoming when speaking about his website's success, telling The Miami Herald in 2003 that he estimated his annual earnings at roughly $1.2 million a year.
In 2007, New York attempted to track down the conservative journalist , who decamped from Hollywood to Florida in 2001 (both, the magazine reported, due to the lower tax rate and the privacy that could be found outside of California).
Though the magazine was never able to interview Drudge for its 2007 profile, he did email them a denial about rumors over his personal life when Out , a prominent LGBTQ magazine, said that he was gay. He has repeatedly denied this.
Years later, he gave a rare interview to controversial far-right radio host Alex Jones in 2015 , during which he spoke about how his Drudge Report has maintained its ethos, while the media landscape has changed around it.
"Drudge, to me, when I look at it right now is a correction to this groupthink," he told Jones. "There's no difference from any of these websites. You go up and down — we talk about this — what's the difference between the websites? Between a Slate or a Salon or a BuzzFeed or a HuffPo — what is the difference? There isn't any! And this is travesty. It's almost like a weird conglomerate of groupthink that has developed in a dynamic era that should be vibrating."
Drudge's right-wing critics disagree. They take particular issue with what they call his opposition to Donald Trump .
In 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson slammed Drudge , saying he had become "a man of the progressive left."
"But if you've seen the Drudge Report recently, you know that it has changed dramatically, 180 degrees," Carlson said. "Matt Drudge is now firmly a man of the progressive left. At times, his site is indistinguishable from The Daily Beast or any other woke propaganda outlet posing as a news company."
PEOPLE's requests for comment on Drudge's role in the unraveling of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal — and his take on his portrayal in the show — were, predictably, not returned.
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There are very few women, post-#MeToo, that the mainstream media will not take seriously.
Monica Lewinsky is one of them. Still.
Apparently, not even producing your own story under the banner of Ryan Murphy — one of Hollywood’s biggest showrunners — won’t get you credibility, let alone sympathy.
“She STILL isn’t over him?” said a headline on The Drudge Report. This, after Lewinsky went on the “Today” show to promote “Impeachment: An American Crime Story.” The headline linked to a story that quoted Lewinsky as saying she didn’t need an apology from Bill Clinton, but he should want to apologize.
Nothing shocking about that — though the headline had it all wrong. It painted Lewinsky in much the same light as in the 1990s: unstable, a stalker, a hysterical female, all while Clinton continually escapes his #MeToo reckoning. The last time he was asked whether he owed Lewinsky an apology — coincidentally on the “Today” show — he could barely contain his fury.
This was in 2018. We knew about Cosby and Weinstein by then, Charlie Rose and Al Franken and all sorts of men who wore a liberal, feminist mask in public and were monsters to women in private.
And we had very rapidly come to reexamine what constitutes sexual harassment and abuse of power.
There really was only one good answer here, but Bill Clinton has always found decency as elusive as the truth.
Q: “I asked if you’d ever apologized [to Lewinsky]. And you said you had.”
Clinton: “I have.”
Q: “You’ve apologized to her?”
Clinton: “I apologized to everybody in the world.”
Q: “But you didn’t apologize to her?”
Clinton: “I have not talked to her. I — I thought it —”
Q: “Do you feel like you owe her an apology —”
Clinton: “No, I do — I do not. I’ve never talked to her. But I did say, publicly, on more than one occasion, that I was sorry. That’s very different. The apology was public.”
Typical Clinton. This scandal — still misogynistically termed “the Lewinsky affair,” rather than “the Clinton scandal” — gave us Bill at his best, slithering through his grand jury testimony with the unforgettable phrase, “It depends what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
“Affair” isn’t quite the word I’d use when describing a 49-year-old married man, the most powerful on earth, one known for his charisma and charm, setting his sights on a starstruck 22-year-old White House intern, using and discarding her, then encouraging her to lie under oath — the resultant pressure and humiliation driving her to suicidal ideations.
Lewinsky was undateable, un-hirable, a pariah. Meanwhile, the president who victimized her — one credibly accused of rape, never forget — allowed his wife and feckless loyalists to mount a “nuts-and-sluts” defense.
So yeah, I’d say Bill Clinton owes Monica Lewinsky an apology.
Meanwhile, the Drudge Report — which broke the story in 1998 after Newsweek killed it — is perplexed yet disappointed by this reconsidered narrative. His headlines:
“The Disneyfication of ‘Impeachment’ ”
“No Cigar!”
“See Villain Tripp in a Fat Suit”
An aside: The late Linda Tripp was a bad person. “Frenemy” doesn’t begin to cover it. Still doesn’t make it okay to mock her weight. That just feels sexist and gross. It was done to Lewinsky back in the late 1990s, and we should have known better then, too. And why is Tripp the main villain in this drama instead of the president?
Over at The New York Times, of course, they’re wondering what we’re even doing here. Perjury? Sexual predation? The president of the United States sexually harassing multiple women in office? Nothing to see here, folks.
“Impeachment,” writes critic James Poniewozik, serves little purpose other than “invit[ing] you to ask what the crime was, if any, and who committed it.”
A famous psychotherapist named Diana de Vegh, 83 years old and practicing in the West Village, recently wrote a piece for Air Mail News about the sexual relationship she had with John F. Kennedy when she was a 20-year-old college student and he was a married senator, then president, twice her age.
For decades, de Vegh considered this a consensual affair, despite Kennedy’s callous demeanor towards her, despite RFK treating her as less than the help, despite the insane power differential — an older man of enormous fame and import shining his light on a very young girl, at a time when women derived much of their power through men.
#MeToo, de Vegh told the Post, encouraged her to reconsider.
“The whole idea of conferred specialness — ‘You go to bed with me, I’ll make you special’ — we’ve seen that with Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, show business,” de Vegh said.
Compounding her trauma was this secret she held. De Vegh said she carried it around like “a pocket of dead energy” for decades after Kennedy’s assassination and subsequent deification. Her entire adult life was consumed by it.
“I was prepared to look straight up at JFK,” de Vegh said. “I never thought that he would be engaged with me. I hoped that he would ‘love’ me.”
Monica Lewinsky endured much the same.
So to say that nothing was taken from de Vegh or Lewinsky — that, too, is a crime.
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How the Drudge Report ushered in the age of Trump
Twenty years ago, Matt Drudge’s reports on the Lewinsky affair nearly brought down Bill Clinton. He was seen as the wellspring of a new, hyper-aggressive American conservatism – but has he been outflanked by his imitators?
A t precisely 9.32pm and two seconds by his Californian clock, Matt Drudge hit the send button on his home computer and changed the world. It was Saturday 17 January 1998, beyond midnight in Washington where President Clinton had no idea what was about to hit him.
“NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN; BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT”
The headline was posted in such small print that, were it not for the capital letters, a reader might have mistaken it for a dispatch on corn prices rather than an avalanche that would propel Bill Clinton all the way to impeachment. But then, Drudge never has run with the typographical crowd.
Two hours later, he followed up with a longer post in which he elaborated that Newsweek had spiked a story from its then investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Had it been published, Drudge said, the story would have revealed that a young, still anonymous female intern had been a “frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office” where she developed a sexual relationship with the president.
The next day the Drudge Report published her name: Monica Lewinsky.
The storm unleashed that Saturday night was all the more potent for coming from a single individual operating out of a one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood where he lived with a cat named Cat, three TVs, three computers, a satellite dish and a police scanner. Not long before, he had been selling T-shirts in a gift shop at CBS Studios .
Twenty years later, we can now see that Drudge, 51, sparked a revolution – a double one at that. Politically, his Lewinsky scoops heralded a new kind of American conservatism that was devil-may-care, iconoclastic, hyper-aggressive and populist. If that sounds familiar, given the fireworks bursting daily out of today’s White House, then that is no coincidence.
“Looking back, he was the beginning of a cultural revolution which we are still in the midst of right now,” says David Horowitz, a conservative writer who helped to bail out Drudge shortly before the Lewinsky affair broke. At the time Drudge was fighting a $30m lawsuit against the Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, whom he had falsely accused of abusing his wife – one of the earliest examples in the internet age of rightwing fake news.
The second revolution Drudge sparked was within the media. By exposing not just the president’s tryst with an intern, but the decision by Newsweek to hold off on the story, he planted a bomb under both the presidency and the mainstream media. “Matt Drudge broke the fraternity of the guardians of the culture,” Horowitz says.
The “fraternity” was aghast at Drudge’s rise. CBS’s Face the Nation refused to sully itself by having Drudge on air. When NBC did extend an invitation, Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, scoffed: “The notion of a cyber gossip sitting on Meet the Press would have been unthinkable!” Drudge lapped up the opprobrium, trolling his critics with the comment: “I’m not a journalist, I’m a kangaroo.”
Despite the brickbats, Drudge rapidly attracted a large readership with his gregarious mix of aggregated Beltway and Hollywood gossip, news stories drawn from outlets spanning the political range, and headlines that were clickbait before the term had been coined. “There’s a new sex droid in town”, was one of his recent headlines.
Where readers flocked, news editors followed with tails between legs. A skim of the Drudge headlines became an essential start to any TV, press or radio editors’ day, helping to define what was shaping up to be the 24-hour news cycle. And with no legacy overheads and a lean staff, Drudge was soon raking in the money, the proceeds of which he enjoys today in his 10-acre property outside Miami where he moved in the wake of the Lewinsky furore.
While the readership has always leaned heavily male and conservative, his devoted fans include unexpected figures, such as feminist intellectual Camille Paglia. She was one of the first established voices to break ranks and endorse the site at a time when it was still being almost universally derided.
“I saw in Matt Drudge the triumph of the populist tabloids,” says Paglia. “It’s amazing how no one, in all these decades, has been able to imitate, displace, or supplant Drudge – because he is a true American original.”
Paglia is right: it is amazing that the Drudge Report continues to enjoy the influence it does. The point-size of its banner headline has crept up a bit, but otherwise the layout of the site is virtually unchanged from the original design, as though it were stuck in time.
According to analytics company comScore, the Drudge Report had 2.5 million unique visitors in November. That reach is amplified when you consider the strong engagement of readers who tend to return frequently, producing a total 292m page views that month.
While the Drudge Report is a rightwing site true to the libertarian, small government, anti-abortion , climate change-denying world view of its creator, its impact is felt much more widely. When the Guardian – not a natural Drudge ally – broke the story of Steve Bannon’s incendiary remarks in Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury this month, fully a quarter of the vast traffic it generated came through Drudge.
Over the past 20 years, the rightwing megaphone has grown far more sophisticated. Savage Nation (1994), Fox News (1996), InfoWars (1999) and Breitbart (2005) – which was started by Drudge’s first assistant, Andrew Breitbart – have all matured in line with the Drudge Report (1995). But instead of threatening his supremacy, they have provided political ballast to his idiosyncrasies.
Drudge is “the wellspring for the conservative media ecosystem”, wrote the Republican strategist Rick Wilson in the Daily Beast .
The threat to the Drudge Report has come, paradoxically, not so much from rightwing competitors but from the very source of his own success – individualised news born of the internet. When he sent out his first newsletter via email to friends, he issued a genuinely personal take on current affairs, an independent act of defiance that appealed to his libertarian values.
That act has spawned countless imitators, but instead of being truly individualised, they are corralled through the modern monoliths Facebook and Twitter. The development has left Drudge baffled and bemused, judging from recent remarks of this increasingly reclusive man.
In October 2015, Drudge, who now rarely allows himself to be seen or heard in public and who did not respond to a Guardian request for interview, turned up unexpectedly in the Austin, Texas studios of Alex Jones’s InfoWars. He remained unseen and behind camera, but did speak passionately for several minutes.
“Twenty years. I’ve had a hell of a run,” Drudge said to Jones from the shadows, clearly feeling nostalgic. Then he got down to business.
“I don’t do the socials,” he said with a telling linguistic awkwardness. “I’m not on Facebook. I’ve got the Twitter thing, but even that’s disgusting.”
The shift has been stealthy but seismic. The Drudge Report’s legendary ability to dictate the news cycle has been stolen by Twitter, where editors – instead of having to rely on Drudge’s judgment – can exercise their own. “You used to see something go up on Drudge and hear it on cable news an hour later – now it’s all moved over to the Twittersphere,” Wilson says.
That trend was temporarily abated during 2016 when the site enjoyed a revival as cheerleader-in-chief for Donald Trump. As Politico put it, Drudge went “all in on Trump”. He reserved his banner headlines for Trump-friendly subjects such as immigration and trade, while running attack stories on contesting Republican candidates such as Ted Cruz . After Trump won his party’s nomination, Drudge provided the same service in the general election, mocking Hillary Clinton as a “brain in a jar” and accusing the rest of the media of covering-up her hypothyroidism .
Much as a Trump victory was palpably desired by Drudge, you have to wonder whether he will come to regret the outcome, in the manner of Frankenstein and his monster.
Dylan Byers, CNN’s senior reporter on media and politics, points out that, by giving Trump a leg-up into the White House, he has helped to create a media phenomenon that is far more powerful than any Drudge Report. “For 20 years, Drudge set the gold standard for gossip, sensationalism and trolling, making him one of the most influential figures in political media,” Byers says. “But Trump is sui generis. He is his own media outlet. He does his own trolling and creates his own sensationalism. The controversies Trump creates with one tweet make Drudge’s entire homepage feel uninspired.”
Uninspired. That’s a word seldom attached to Matt Drudge. But nothing is safe in the Trump era, it seems. Not even the wellspring of conservative media.
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Meet the Cast of American Crime Story: Impeachment —And Their Real-Life Counterparts
By Liam Hess
This week, the latest installment in Ryan Murphy ’s American Crime Story anthology debuted with a bang. Titled American Crime Story: Impeachment, the ten-part series charts the story behind (and the ensuing fallout from) President Bill Clinton’s highly controversial affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky . The show was among the most hotly anticipated of the year, in no small part due to its timeliness in the wake of the #MeToo movement and Lewinsky’s close involvement with the series as a producer.
But it isn’t just the promise of a new side of Lewinsky’s story being told that has viewers keen to watch Murphy’s latest. It’s also thanks to the eclectic lineup of characters—many of whom are still active in politics and media today—that will be portrayed onscreen. While the trailers already impressed for the resemblances between Beanie Feldstein and Monica Lewinsky or Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp, a few more playful casting choices—Edie Falco as First Lady Hillary Clinton, for example, or Billy Eichner as digital-media maverick Matt Drudge—make it clear that there will be plenty more surprises in store as the series unfolds.
Here, find all the names you need to know appearing in American Crime Story: Impeachment , and the historical figures they’re playing.
Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinsky
While Feldstein’s extraordinary performance imbues Lewinsky—one of the most notorious (and notoriously misunderstood) women in recent history— with both tenacity and pathos, her physical transformation is equally notable. The trailer alone was enough to make us do a double-take.
Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp
Feldstein’s performance as Lewinsky may be the centerpiece of the show, but Paulson’s portrayal of Lewinsky’s one-time friend and eventual betrayer, fellow Pentagon employee Linda Tripp, is just as striking—even if her use of a fatsuit to portray the character has sparked controversy .
Clive Owen as Bill Clinton
By Alexandra Macon
By Kerry McDermott
The casting of British heartthrob Clive Owen as the Arkansas-born President Bill Clinton came as one of the more intriguing decisions when the show’s starry lineup was first announced. But with the help of accent coaching, prosthetics, and a handful of hairpieces, it’s clear that Owen has effortlessly slipped into inhabiting Clinton during the most tumultuous period of his presidency.
Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton
Another casting choice that raised eyebrows was The Sopranos star Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton. Still, with the help of a well-placed wig or two, Falco’s transformation into the beleaguered first lady has proven arresting. As to whether she nails Clinton’s distinctive, deep voice? For that, you’ll have to watch the show.
Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones
For her role as Paula Jones—the former Arkansas state employee who sued Clinton for sexual harassment and thus expanded Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s investigation into the Whitewater scandal , leading to the eventual discovery of Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky—Annaleigh Ashford’s costumes, hair, and makeup offer one of the show’s most extreme makeovers. A key figure in the show’s unpicking of the sexual politics between women and powerful men, Ashford more than delivers.
Cobie Smulders as Ann Coulter
Given her current notoriety as a highly visible conservative-media pundit, it’s easy to forget that Ann Coulter first made her name as a staunch critic of the Clinton administration, becoming entwined in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal after publishing her first book on his impeachment, to which she was a front-row observer. In a playful spot of casting, the role (and Coulter’s ever-present long blonde tresses) is being inhabited by the beloved Cobie Smulders of How I Met Your Mother and The Avengers. Rest assured, however, that Smulders still brings all the acid-laced viciousness playing Coulter requires.
Billy Eichner as Matt Drudge
In another stroke of casting genius, actor and comedian Billy Eichner steps up to play Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report, whose early reports on the Lewinsky affair made him one of the key media figures charting the evolution of the Starr investigation, and beyond. Just like Smulders, Eichner weaponizes his likable offscreen persona to brilliant effect, proving an impressive dupe for Drudge—his signature trilby, included.
Judith Light as Susan Carpenter-McMillan
As a Ryan Murphy veteran, with appearances in both The Politician and American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace to her credit, Light is well accustomed to the dramatic physical transformations the producer is so fond of. Still, in her role as Susan Carpenter-McMillan, Paula Jones’s glamorous legal advisor, Light’s metamorphosis makes for one of her most memorable performances in a Murphy show yet.
Blair Underwood as Vernon Jordan
An oft-forgotten player in the Lewinsky scandal is Vernon Jordan, the business executive and civil rights activist who was a close friend of Clinton’s and helped orchestrate Lewinsky’s move from the White House to the Pentagon ahead of the uncovering of the affair. Brought to the witness stand during the impeachment trial, Jordan’s deposition was one of the most closely watched—and controversial—of those called to speak from within Clinton’s team. Playing Jordan in American Crime Story is television star Blair Underwood, in one of the show’s more understated but brilliantly effective performances.
Taran Killam as Steve Jones
Another overlooked figure embroiled in the Clinton fiasco was Steve Jones, Paula’s husband, whose fierce support of his wife—but aggressive approach to the ongoing litigation with Clinton—caused tensions between the couple that ultimately led to their divorce five years after the lawsuit. In another offbeat casting choice, Jones is played by Saturday Night Live alumnus Taran Killam, who dives into the role with delightfully unhinged glee.
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Matt Drudge Has Barely Changed Anything About The Drudge Report In The Last 20 Years. This Summer, He Upended Its Advertising Business.
A change to the secretive publisher’s business has revealed new details about his operation and is attracting scrutiny from the ad industry.
BuzzFeed News Reporter
The Drudge Report, with its Web 1.0 design offering a single page of links, is one of the enduring internet media business success stories. Two decades after rising to prominence for breaking news of the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky affair, it remains one of the most popular websites in the United States and a key source of right-wing ideas for its readers, including President Donald Trump.
Owner Matt Drudge is also still adept at attracting attention, such as last week when his was the only major news site to post the El Paso, Texas, Walmart shooter’s manifesto. But the site has always resisted the temptation to build anything beyond the simplest business of selling display advertising on a single homepage.
Now, Drudge has quietly flipped the switch on perhaps the biggest change he’s ever made: He’s ditched his longtime advertising partner for a new representative, in the process revealing new details about his business and attracting scrutiny of how his site operates.
The reclusive publisher does not disclose revenue figures, but estimates put the site’s annual haul well into the realm of millions of dollars per year. Pathmatics, a marketing intelligence platform, estimates that over the past 12 months the site generated more than $30 million in ad revenue. Another estimate from the Global Disinformation Index , to be published in a report next month, pegs revenue at $9 million per year.
In a surprising turn, Drudge Report removed ads between the end of May and mid-July, according to Danny Rogers, a cofounder of the Global Disinformation Index, a project that’s analyzing domains to generate “risk ratings of the world’s media sites.” After noticing an absence of ads on Drudge around May 31, “we didn’t see any ads on Drudge until about July 12,” Rogers told BuzzFeed News.
During that period, Drudge cast off his advertising representative of close to 20 years, Intermarkets, in favor of a new and unknown company, Granite Cubed. It has no record in the digital ad industry, was only registered as a company in March of this year, and lists no staff or owners on its websites. Yet it just landed one of the biggest websites in the US.
“Any time a 20-year relationship comes to an end is certainly a surprising turn of events,” said Jay Friedman, president of Goodway Group , a digital agency that specializes in programmatic media buying.
Corporate records show that Granite Cubed is owned by Margaret Otto. She and her husband, Adrian, have a business association with the Drudge family that goes back years. The couple acquired Refdesk, a reference website founded by Bob Drudge, Matt’s father, in 2017. They also operated a company that began hosting the Drudge Report in 1999 and later added Breitbart as a customer. (The couple did not answer questions about whether they still own that hosting company or if it’s still hosting Drudge or Breitbart.)
Adrian Otto is the technical director of Google Cloud. He told BuzzFeed News he is not involved with Granite Cubed. Upon joining Google in 2017 from Rackspace, he said, he “stopped operating [his] other business interests” and is no longer involved with “hosting duties” for other websites. Otto was previously listed as the technical contact in the domain registration of breitbart.com, and was thanked by name in the foreword to Andrew Breitbart’s book about Hollywood.
“I knew Andrew Breitbart when he was alive, and helped him with some technical work,” Otto said.
Margaret Otto declined to discuss her company’s plans for Drudge Report or Refdesk, which she said is also represented by Granite. She wouldn’t say if she represents other websites or answer other questions, such as whether Matt or Bob Drudge were shareholders in Granite.
“We respect our customer’s privacy, and therefore, cannot comment on the other questions,” she said in an email.
Friedman said the connections between the Ottos and Drudges raise a question of whether the move to Granite Cubed is “a relationship play [or] a revenue maximization play,” given that today’s representation firms need to be “incredibly technically savvy and have a really good grasp on how to [succeed] in an automated ad market.”
Drudge was characteristically silent when emailed by BuzzFeed News for comment about his new advertising partner and the strategy for his site. His old partners were also hesitant to speak, reinforcing how one of the web’s most influential websites remains in many ways a one-man black box.
“Intermarkets no longer represents DrudgeReport.com, and it is our policy to not discuss former clients with the media,” said Kevin Lucido, the CEO of Intermarkets, which represents other conservative publishers, such as the Media Research Center and the Political Insider.
For his part, Bob Drudge said in an email, “I am retired and have no comment.”
It all makes for a startling shift for a publisher best known for a strategy rooted in changing nothing about his site’s operation. It’s also causing the ad industry to look closely at the mysterious new firm and its high-profile customer.
Friedman said Granite Cubed’s lack of a track record and profile in the industry will be a challenge if it tries to sell ad space directly to brands and agencies. “Certainly if you decide to go to big brands and sell directly, the Granite Cubed thing is going to be challenging. [Brands] get 100 requests a week for meetings and this probably isn’t going to float to the top,” even if they’re representing Drudge, he said.
Others in the industry say they had concerns about Drudge long before the switch to Granite. A manager at another ad tech company told BuzzFeed News he blocked the Drudge Report from its systems in 2017 due to “unacceptable auto-refreshing practices.”
After being loaded in a web browser, Drudge’s site automatically reloads itself after two minutes. The manager said the frequent refresh rate for Drudge Report raised concerns about the number of ads being loaded that were actually able to be viewed by users.
“The page was refreshing approximately every 120 seconds, with no consideration given to user activity. The user could have it open in a background tab and it would accrue [ad] impressions all day long,” said the manager, who requested anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak to the media about specific websites.
The manager said they also removed refdesk.com from the platform due to similar concerns.
Drudge, Granite, and Intermarkets declined to comment on the refresh rate or the comments from the ad tech company manager.
In an interview with Ad Age last year , Erik Requidan, an Intermarkets executive who helped oversee Drudge’s monetization efforts, spoke about how the site’s seemingly low-tech design belied a more “sophisticated” ad operation.
“What seems like a pretty simple thing on the surface is actually quite sophisticated and effective,” he said.
Contact Craig Silverman at [email protected] .
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‘impeachment: american crime story’ team on collaborating with monica lewinsky, awaiting clinton reaction.
At Wednesday's premiere, Beanie Feldstein, Sarah Paulson, Billy Eichner and Cobie Smulders discussed Lewinsky's role on set and how they feel about the real-life people watching their portrayals.
By Kirsten Chuba
Kirsten Chuba
Events Editor
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After three years in development, Impeachment: American Crime Story is now just days away from being shown to the world — and to the subjects it depicts, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge and Paula Jones.
“I feel nervous,” writer and exec producer Sarah Burgess admitted to The Hollywood Reporter at the show’s premiere on Wednesday. “For three years I have thought about this, the families of people who’ve passed away and the real characters themselves. Part of me is fascinated to see what response they’ll have. I know there will be contrast with how people feel about their own lives, I know that from Monica. So I’m nervous about that but I accept it too and I’m curious if anyone speaks out, what they say.”
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The FX series, of course, follows the Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal of the 1990s, with Lewinsky as a producer who gave notes on every script. And as EP Brad Simpson notes, “this season doesn’t have a lot of good guys in it,” which may result in some public reaction.
Cobie Smulders, who plays Coulter, anticipates the conservative pundit “will probably be tickled by the whole thing” and Billy Eichner, who plays Drudge, saw the political commentator already put a photo of him in character as a lead story on The Drudge Report , “which was a hilariously surreal, meta moment. I thought, ‘Well, this is the perfect way for this to end.'”
“Of course you’re curious about they react. We hope everyone feels we’ve been fair and empathetic to them, [but] everyone’s going to have different reactions,” added Simpson. “This is a story about Washington and some of them acting at their worst, so I think it’ll be complicated for a lot of people to watch.”
One subject who knows what’s coming is Lewinsky, who along with her active advising of writers and producers also worked closely with star Beanie Feldstein . The Booksmart actress said it was freeing knowing her scenes had been “Monica-sanctioned,” but more so the two worked together on specifics unavailable in any book or news report.
“What nail polish color were you wearing; did you call Catherine [Allday Davis] ‘Cat,’ did you call her ‘Cathy’? What was your nickname for her? Was it this grandma that gave you this necklace or was it that grandma?” Feldstein said of the sort of conversations she had with Lewinsky. “I didn’t want to leave anything unturned or unknown. I didn’t want to guess.”
Sarah Paulson , who exec produced as well as played Linda Tripp, also has formed a close bond with Lewinsky over dinners and FaceTimes.
“I find her to be a really special person and she was a huge asset to the production. She insisted things be there for veracity sake that probably made her wildly uncomfortable — I know they did — but she felt it was for the benefit of the story,” Paulson told THR . “She’s become a friend, a real friend. I only learned recently that she told the L.A. Times that she was actually concerned when she became friends with me that I would betray her. And I called her up and was like, ‘You never told me this’ and she’s like ‘I wasn’t going to tell you! I don’t think that anymore.’ And I was like ‘I’m so glad!’
The premiere, held at Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, also welcomed stars Annaleigh Ashford, Clive Owen, Mira Sorvino, Blair Underwood, Colin Hanks, Elizabeth Reaser and Taran Killam, along with EPs Nina Jacobson and Alexis Martin Woodall. EP and director Ryan Murphy was not in attendance, and Lewinsky did not do red carpet interviews but joined the cast for a cocktail reception, where she embraced Feldstein and Paulson and was honored during the night’s champagne toast. Which, the cast said, is a reaction they hope is mirrored in the audience.
“The goal of Impeachment is to illuminate the sides of these people that people were never exposed to at the time,” said Feldstein. “I’m really excited for those who are watching to understand that Paula Jones and Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky and everyone in the show, they’re human beings. They’re not just late-night jokes or caricatures or SNL characters.”
Impeachment: American Crime Story premieres on FX on Tuesday.
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After Bill and Monica, Drudge Report Continued With Scoops Almost As Big For 20 Years
Nearly 20 years ago, conservative blogger Matt Drudge tipped off the nation to one of the biggest political sex scandals in history. On January 17, 1998, Drudge posted to his "The Drudge Report" site about a Newsweek piece detailing former President Bill Clinton's relationship with 22-year-old intern Monica Lewinsky.
From there, Clinton would issue strong denials, face a grand jury and impeachment trial and eventually admit to an "inappropriate" relationship with Lewinsky that dogged the rest of his presidency and tarnished his legacy.
While it was technically a scoop of a scoop, the story elevated Drudge and perhaps reset the stage for newsgathering just as the Internet was about to take hold of the world. The subsequent fall out involved a media feeding frenzy for all things Bill and Monica, with everything from her stained blue dress to recordings with friend Linda Tripp all thrown to the public.
And for the last two decades, Drudge has continually provided readers with scoops ranging from big to stupendous to head-scratching. Here are some of the biggest scoops belonging to Drudge.
Roger Ailes built Fox News from the ground up in the late 1990s, making it headquarters for conservative media and eventually, President Donald Trump's favored cable news outlet. But when Ailes died in May of last year, it was Drudge—not Fox News—who first reported of Ailes' death.
Drudge Report scoops Fox on Ailes death. His widow's statement went straight to Matt. — Jeremy W. Peters (@jwpetersNYT) May 18, 2017
Amid allegations of sexual harassment at Fox News, Ailes left in July 2016 and received millions from the network, Drudge was the first to report.
More: DRUDGE exclusive: AILES OUT AT FOX NEWS pic.twitter.com/ouLhNczDM7 — Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 19, 2016
The 2016 presidential debates were the highest of theatre and drama the country's experienced in some time, and Drudge further fueled it with a report about Hillary Clinton's request for a step-stool in the first showdown . Then Republican candidate Donald Trump had about 10 inches on Clinton height-wise and Drudge claimed former Clinton campaign manager was worried about how it would like on television.
Known to favor Trump, Drudge also played up heavy speculation about Clinton's health along the campaign trail. His report claimed Clinton had been having coughing fits for weeks and that the first debate would not have commercials, which could expose Clinton to embarrassment over her supposed illness. Prior to the debate, Clinton's doctor said pneumonia was the cause of her stumble at a 9/11 memorial service in New York.
Newt's Comeback Bid
In 2012, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich was in the midst of a political comeback with a bid for the presidency. But, in January of that year, his ex-wife, Marianne Ginther, granted an interview to ABC News that could have proved damning to his candidacy.
Drudge reported that ABC originally questioned whether it should air the interview prior to South Carolina's Republican primary. Ultimately, the network aired it before the primary and Ginther explained that Gingrich wanted an open marriage, among other allegations. They were divorced in 2000, and Gingrich later admitted to carrying on an affair with current wife Callista Gingrich while Bill Clinton faced impeachment proceedings .
Megyn Kelly's Exit
After her public battle with candidate Trump and an alleged rift with former anchor Bill O'Reilly, Megyn Kelly appeared primed to leave Fox News. In December 2016, Drudge reported just that , claiming CNN wanted to snatch her away. A month later, she agreed to join NBC. Kelly's success at the network has been limited.
Prince Harry In Afghanistan Tour
In February 2008, Drudge revealed the United Kingdom's Prince Harry was taking part in a British Army offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Then 23 years old and third in royal line of succession, the U.K.'s military decided to pull Harry out of action as a result.
Originally, media outlets knew of Harry's presence in Afghanistan but agreed to an embargo of the story for security reasons. After a German and Australian outlet published stories, Drudge was accused of breaking that embargo even though he claimed the story as an exclusive.
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Web Archive Drudge Report
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- Drudge Report
- "The Drudge Report is a politically conservative American news aggregation website. Run by Matt Drudge with the help of Charles Hurt, the site consists mainly of links to stories from the United States and international mainstream media about politics, entertainment, and current events; it also has links to many columnists. Occasionally, Drudge authors new stories himself, based on tips. The Drudge Report originated in 1996 as a weekly subscriber-based email dispatch. It was the first news source to break the Monica Lewinsky scandal to the public, after Newsweek decided to hold its story." -- Summary retrieved on October 7, 2019 http://dbpedia.org/resource/Drudge_Report
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- United States.
- Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 20540 USA
- http://drudgereport.com/
- http://www.drudgereport.com/
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- - drudgereport.com (domain)
- - www.drudgereportArchives.com (domain)
- - townhall.com/ (domain)
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- MODSXML Base Record
- MODSXML Supplemental Record
- General News on the Internet Web Archive (99)
- General Collections (144,947)
- Serial and Government Publications Division (278,342)
- Web Archive
- 2001 to 2022
- United States
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Drudge Report . United States, 2001. Web Archive. https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0010145/.
APA citation style:
(2001) Drudge Report . United States. [Web Archive] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0010145/.
MLA citation style:
Drudge Report . United States, 2001. Web Archive. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0010145/>.
IMAGES
COMMENTS
DRUDGE REPORT 2023® Biden bucks liberals and tells Dems to get tough on crime... Bets big voters will reward him for new bridge, road projects... Marianne Williamson begins challenge... Buttigieg starts to rethink job in wake of Ohio train disaster... 20 more Norfolk Southern cars derail in Ohio... Inside the Panic at FOX After '20 Election...
Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, 23, has denied having any "sexual relationship with President Clinton" in a sworn affidavit, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. Lewinsky's sworn written statement was executed last week after she was served with a subpoena in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case.
Matt Drudge's Impeachment: American Crime Story Debut and Strange Origin Story After fleshing out Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp's story lines, the series switches focus to Matt Drudge, the...
Matt Drudge opened up to ET in these rare interviews amid the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998. The Drudge Report founder explained his website's role in breaking details about the ...
January 11, 2018 at 9:00 a.m. EST Article JAN. 17, 1998 On this day, the gossip and news aggregation site Drudge Report carried an item that Newsweek was sitting on a story about President Bill...
Matt Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story 20 years ago today Axios Matt Drudge in 1997. Photo: Amy Etra / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Images 20 years ago today, back in 1998, Matt Drudge posted his most famous siren banner: "NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN."
The first publication to mention the cigar was The Drudge Report, a conservative-leaning news aggregation website founded by Matt Drudge. The Drudge Report story also claimed that Yasser...
The Drudge Report started in 1995 as a gossip column focusing on Hollywood and Washington, D.C. [11] Matt Drudge began the email-based newsletter from an apartment in Hollywood, California, using his connections with industry and media insiders to break stories, sometimes before they hit the mainstream media.
On this day in 1998, the Drudge Report carried an item on its website alleging that Newsweek magazine was sitting on a story exposing an affair between President Bill Clinton and Monica...
Matt Drudge started Drudge Report as an insider newsletter that shared gossipy, sometimes hard to find info like TV ratings. He rose to prominence with his role in breaking the Bill Clinton /...
Weeks later, the scandal was covered by news website The Drudge Report and subsequently blew up in the mainstream press. Monica Lewinsky surrounded by photographers as she gets into a car on her ...
The founder of the popular news aggregator Drudge Report is known to give few interviews and has grown increasingly reclusive. Matt Drudge played a pivotal role in the scandal that engulfed Bill ...
So yeah, I'd say Bill Clinton owes Monica Lewinsky an apology. Meanwhile, the Drudge Report — which broke the story in 1998 after Newsweek killed it — is perplexed yet disappointed by this...
Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky at the White House. Drudge's revelation that Newsweek pulled a report on the president's affair with an intern led to impeachment proceedings. Photograph: AP...
In another stroke of casting genius, actor and comedian Billy Eichner steps up to play Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report, whose early reports on the Lewinsky affair made him one of the key media ...
Matt Drudge opened up to ET in these rare interviews amid the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998. The Drudge Report founder explained his websi...
The Drudge Report, with its Web 1.0 design offering a single page of links, is one of the enduring internet media business success stories. Two decades after rising to prominence for breaking news of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair, it remains one of the most popular websites in the United States and a key source of right-wing ideas for its readers, including President Donald Trump.
The FX series, of course, follows the Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal of the 1990s, with Lewinsky as a producer who gave notes on every script. And as EP Brad Simpson notes, "this season ...
After Bill and Monica, Drudge Report Continued With Scoops Almost As Big For 20 Years. By Greg Price On 1/13/18 at 6:00 AM EST. A photograph showing former White House intern Monica Lewinsky ...
visits to drudge 3/02/2023 22,813,698 past 24 hours 671,044,278 past 31 days 8,387,157,459 past year reference desk. email: [email protected] be seen! run ads on drudge report... california notice do not sell my info
The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, 23, has been subpoenaed to give a deposition in the Paula Jones case. About the young woman, this is known: WORK EXPERIENCE *Summer of 1995 Intern, Office of Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, The White House.
"The Drudge Report is a politically conservative American news aggregation website. Run by Matt Drudge with the help of Charles Hurt, the site consists mainly of links to stories from the United States and international mainstream media about politics, entertainment, and current events; it also has links to many columnists.
Matt Drudge is an Internet journalist and muckraker. Drudge's web site, Drudge Report (begun in 1994), consists primarily of links to stories about politics, entertainment, and various current events, and to many popular columnists, although Drudge occasionally authors a story of his own. Drudge started his website on a 486 computer from an apartment in Hollywood, California.