Taylor Lorenz is a reporter with The Washington Post who was roundly ripped last month after she named the woman behind Libs of TikTok, an anonymous Twitter account that retweets videos posted by leftists to expose their radicalism.
On Monday, she posted tweet on the social media site accusing the Drudge Report of threatening to ruin her career.
“After calling and texting me relentlessly for a week, the Drudge Report editor just called my personal cell phone number, yelled at me when I asked him to leave me alone and said he would ‘blast my name all over Drudge Report until it ruins my career,'” she wrote.
Lorenz has since deleted the tweet..
Lorenz’ accusation was quite serious. Matt Drudge, the reclusive blogger who first reported on Monica Lewinsky’s affair with President Bill Clinton, runs a tight ship at his Drudge Report (disclaimer: the author of this piece ran the website in the mornings for several years).
The allegation prompted Oliver Darcy, CNN’s senior media reporter, to reach out to Drudge, who lives on a sprawling compound in Florida.
“@DRUDGE himself contacted @TaylorLorenz to ask for a correction after she said in tweets that a Drudge editor had harassed her. Drudge told me no one ‘associated with the DRUDGE REPORT’ had contacted her prior. Lorenz says her tweets were mostly a joke,” Darcy wrote on Twitter.
“WaPo’s Taylor Lorenz walked back an allegation on Monday that an editor for the Drudge Report had repeatedly harassed her after she was contacted by Matt Drudge himself. Lorenz tweeted Monday that she had bene ‘relentlessly’ harassed by a Drudge Report editor who had threatened to use the site to destroy her career. It was a serious allegation and so I checked in with Drudge who told me that he had ‘never contacted her, nor has anyone associated with the DRUDGE REPORT.’ Drudge, who made clear to me he was not pleased with the allegations against his site, forwarded me an email he had sent Lorenz asking for a correction,” Darcy wrote.
“When Lorenz received Drudge’s request, she deleted her tweets and posted a clarification: ‘For anyone who saw my post abt this man claiming to be from Drudge calling me non stop, good news: I heard from Matt Drudge & this man has zero power over Drudge! He’s claiming to be an editor all over the internet but he’s not. Sorry to disappoint everyone saying Drudge is based.’ Lorenz told me that her initial tweets were a ‘joke’ and that she found the idea someone could harm her career via the Drudge Report ‘hilarious.’ Lorenz said she was ‘laughing very hard about the idea’ and was simply joking about it online. ‘I am happy to correct the record that I have no drama with Drudge Report,’ Lorenz told me,” Darcy wrote.
Darcy continued, “A WaPo spox said: ‘Taylor was repeatedly contacted by someone who claimed to be a Drudge editor. As soon as she learned the person had no connection to the Drudge Report, she deleted the original tweet and wrote a tweet apologizing for her comment…'”
—@DRUDGE himself contacted @TaylorLorenz to ask for a correction after she said in tweets that a Drudge editor had harassed her. Drudge told me no one "associated with the DRUDGE REPORT" had contacted her prior. Lorenz says her tweets were mostly a joke. https://t.co/At1XFWIdDb pic.twitter.com/XZsOgHQDIX
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) May 3, 2022
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.