The Drudge Report defined the dizzying series of events surrounding President Trump on Tuesday afternoon as his “Hell Hour.”
The banner headline in the popular news aggregation site came after President Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort was found guilty in a Virginia courtroom of eight charges of bank and tax fraud — just at the same time as official news broke that the president’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, had pleaded guilty to charges of bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance law violations.
In all-caps red lettering, Drudge called it “Trump Hell Hour” followed by the words “Manafort: Guilty” and “Cohen: I’m Guilty.”
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President Trump reacted to the Manafort news by calling him a “good man” and saying it was a “sad thing” he was convicted in federal court.
“This has nothing to do with Russian collusion. … This is a witch hunt and it’s a disgrace,” he told reporters as he landed in West Virginia for a campaign rally later in the day.
The Drudge Report, a popular news aggregation site that launched in 1996, has been largely supportive of Trump going back to the campaign, something the president noted in June in an interview on “Fox & Friends.”
“Drudge is great, by the way. Matt Drudge is a great gentlemen who really… he’s got an ability to capture the stories people want to see,” he said on June 15.
The Drudge Report regularly places headlines favorable to the president on the site, which is visited by more than 2 million people per day.