The right-wing media powerhouse, known for revealing Bill Clinton’s notorious affair, has criticized President Donald Trump for employing intimidation tactics to suppress free speech among his detractors.

The Drudge Report, a conservative news aggregation website, has called out the president in a rare intervention over the First Amendment.

Following the cancellation of ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’, Drudge Report Editor Cody Cambre argued that Trump has exploited the tragic death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, manipulating the incident to curb criticism against him and his administration.

‘The president, alongside the controversial offspring of the once-promising Tea Party, is flagrantly using Charlie Kirk’s tragic demise to further spread their political venom across the nation,’ Cambre stated to the Daily Mail.

‘That is almost as bad as those who speak ill of Charlie in the wake of his assassination.’

The Drudge Report – which gained notoriety for breaking the news of President Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in 1998 – previously supported Trump, especially during his first presidential election in 2016. 

Cambre claimed the unfiltered news site is what ‘got Donald Trump elected the first time.’ 

But the tides had changed by the 2020 election, when Drudge Report founder Matt Drudge allegedly had a ‘major falling out’ with Trump, a former conservative media executive told The Hill in 2021. 

The Report – while still right-leaning – has begun keeping Trump in check, as Cambre described. 

For instance, on Friday, the website recirculated a Washington Post article titled, ‘Late-night hosts pretend to flatter Trump after Kimmel’s removal from ABC.’ 

The piece delves into popular TV personalities, including Jon Stewart and Seth Meyers, satirically complimenting Trump on their late-night shows after Kimmel was axed for commenting on Kirk’s death and mocking how the president was grieving.

‘We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,’ Kimmel said during his Monday night monologue.

However, investigators say murder suspect Tyler Robinson, 22, held far-left and anti-fascist political ideologies.  

Kimmel went on to criticize Trump’s statement about Kirk’s death. 

‘This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish, okay?’

Since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) went after Kimmel and he was subsequently pulled from the air, Trump has been vocal about his intentions to penalize late-night hosts who speak negatively of him.

‘They give me only bad press,’ he said on Air Force One as he boarded a flight in the UK back to America after a state visit, claiming that 97 percent of this kind of programming bashes him. 

‘I would think maybe their licenses should be taken away,’ Trump said.

Days prior, Trump told reporters he may ‘go after’ journalists who challenge him. 

‘Because you treat me so unfairly…so maybe we’ll have to go after you,’ Trump told a reporter, while discussing who Attorney General Pam Bondi may target while tackling ‘hate speech.’ 

‘I saw the President in a video on Twitter [X] today say that reporters are “not allowed to criticize me” and you know… luckily the FCC has zero jurisdiction over the Drudge Report,’ Cambre asserted. 

‘Yes, I am allowed to criticize the president and I will. And I dare him to do something about it. 

‘Look, I like Donald Trump personally, but after he allowed [White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller to influence him into disastrously dishonoring the troops and sending them to LA, I felt like he had lost the plot.’

Cambre also labeled Disney as ‘weak’ for pulling Kimmel off the air shortly after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to investigate him and ABC after he shared divisive sentiments regarding the September 10 political assassination.

He also hinted at pulling the broadcast licenses from network affiliates that aired Kimmel’s show. 

‘It’s a mirror to what’s actually going on in society,’ Cambre warned. 

‘The FCC will eventually take away net neutrality and the government will pressure telecom companies to throttle or disrupt or even halt access to online news outlets and at that point all media is in danger of being silenced.’

According to the American Library Association, net neutrality is the principle that ‘internet service providers should treat all data equally and should not discriminate or provide preference to any data regardless of its source, content or destination.’

Carr has been an adversary of net neutrality rules, which were initially pushed by the FCC during Barack Obama’s administration in 2015. Trump walked back those efforts during his first presidential term. 

The FCC tried to reinstate net neutrality in April 2024 under President Joe Biden’s administration, but the Democratic-led effort was short-lived. 

In January, at the start of Trump’s second term, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down Biden’s net neutrality rules, which would ‘increase government control of the internet,’ according to a statement from Carr. 

Carr has long criticized net neutrality, which he called ‘Biden’s Internet power grab,’ claiming that without it, internet speeds and coverage are faster and more efficient.

But proponents of the concept, like Cambre, argue it is essential for the survival of the free press without censorship or blockades. 

Cambre has not only accused the president of trying to silence media personalities and journalists, but of disseminating propaganda through what he says is essentially a knock-off Drudge Report. 

Back in May, the Trump administration launched The White House Wire, a site devoted to sharing news stories that positively reflect the president. 

It has the same look and concept as the Drudge Report – boasting large, all-caps headlines at the top of the page.

‘I’m considering a $1 trillion lawsuit!’ Drudge Report creator Matt Drudge told Status News at the time, in what the publication called a sarcastic ‘jab at Trump’s habit of filing outlandish legal claims against the media.’ 

Cambre said the White House team, led by Communications Director Steven Cheung, ‘thought it was a good idea to probably steal the IP of Matt’s iconic website for propaganda purposes.’

‘I knew then that if he went for ABC and NYT [The New York Times], he would eventually come for Drudge,’ he added. 

And he believes the worst is yet to come. 

‘The president should have done things differently and should abandon the Project 2025 sickos who he is letting influence him,’ Cambre urged.  

‘I wanted a golden age, I expected better and we’re all getting a hellscape instead.’ 

The editor is not alone in his drab outlook on America’s political future, especially regarding free speech and the FCC’s threats. 

Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro told NBC he felt ‘fear’ upon learning Kimmel, an ABC veteran of 22 years, was pulled from the air. 

He said that seeing the principle of freedom of speech being ‘undermined by the long arm of the federal government is extremely dangerous.

‘Whether you agree with Jimmy Kimmel or not, whether you found him funny or not, to fire someone cause he told a joke about the president…that is dangerous.’

Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the chairman of the Senate committee overseeing the FCC, has also denounced Kimmel’s cancellation. 

‘I think it is unbelievably dangerous for the government to put itself in the position of saying, “We’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying,”‘ Cruz said during his podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz, on Friday. 

‘And it might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it. 

‘I like Brendan Carr, but we should not be in this business…We shouldn’t be threatening government power to force him off air. That’s a real mistake.’