“Lately he has been absolutely terrible toward President Trump,” said conservative podcaster Josh Bernstein in a Nov. 8 show, dubbing the site “the Sludge Report.”

Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft pleaded, “Dear Matt Drudge — Please come home,” while Fox’s Jesse Watters took notice of a series of anti-Trump headlines, saying, “it just seems like the website has recently played up Trump gaffes and downplayed his successes.”

And they’re not wrong, according to B.J. Rudell, associate director of the Center for Political Leadership, Innovation and Service at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, who pinpoints the U-turn to the first week of August.

“There is a deliberateness to this, in my opinion,” said Mr. Rudell, a longtime Drudge-watcher. “It’s been happening for over 100 days straight. There’s no sign of it changing, and so the question then becomes for me, why?”