drudge report ranking

The en-vogue mainstream critique of the Fed is that they made a mistake by raising rates “too late,” implying that a recession could have been averted if only the Fed had acted sooner. But this misses the bigger picture, that the bust (or recession) was set in motion prior to 2021, beginning the moment the Fed intervened in the market.

The same day, Governor Philip N. Jefferson wrote a response to the Managing Disinflation paper. Not much is worthy of repeating, but this excerpt helps illustrate the problem:

The Volcker disinflation of 1981–82 resulted in a painful recession. But the reduction in inflation was large. Thus, measured in terms of percentage points of inflation reduction, as is conventionally done, it was not particularly costly.

Simplified:  the Volcker recession was painful, but not costly because the statistical data tells us so.

Mises readers knew a long time ago the inevitability of recession, that there was no policy error . The only thing we can count on is that the Fed will try to fix the problem it created, by doing what it does best, creating more problems to fix.

Murray Rothbard's Birthday

Today would have been Murray Rothbard’s ninety-seventh birthday. He was an unforgettable friend whose immense knowledge of many different fields was unsurpassed, in my experience. In a lecture on the Austrian theory of the business cycle, he mentioned the common objection that the expansion...

Today would have been Murray Rothbard’s ninety-seventh birthday. He was an unforgettable friend whose immense knowledge of many different fields was unsurpassed, in my experience. In a lecture on the Austrian theory of the business cycle, he mentioned the common objection that the expansion of bank credit might have no effect if investors anticipated trouble. After the lecture, I asked whether Mises had answered this point. He said, “See his response to Lachmann in  Economica , 1943.” I often went to used bookstores with him, in both Palo Alto and Manhattan, and listened to him as he commented on nearly every book on the shelves. When he was a student at Columbia, he admired the philosopher Ernest Nagel, who he said would always encourage students to do new work. Murray was like this himself. He constantly encouraged students to work on Austrian and libertarian topics. His support for me was never failing, and I owe him everything. If only he were still here now, to guide and instruct us!

Keep Asking the Wrong Questions

The problem with central banking can be articulated with just one sentence, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa D. Cook recently stated :

As policymakers, my colleagues and I make decisions that impact...

As policymakers, my colleagues and I make decisions that impact the entire country.

Unlike the local bakery which stays in business so long as it provides a valued service, the opposite is true for policymakers. What the Fed offers is decidedly against the public’s interest, but the public can hardly escape the Fed’s services .

With this concentration of power comes more questions, such as “what if policymakers make the wrong decisions or by their very nature are incapable of making the right ones?” Consider further remarks made by the Governor that speaks to a concerning lack of basic foundations of economics.

Diversity is essential in every profession. That is especially true in professions that thrive and evolve by answering questions, like economics.

Heartwarming. The media tells us diversity is good. Surely when a central banker speaks of it, it must be extra good! But when discussing economics, which apparently will “evolve by answering questions,” we should be referring to intellectual diversity , not physical diversity.

There is a 1971 audio recording of Mises doing a question and answer session. Near the beginning he states the questions he considers “the most important and most urgent,” regarding inflation. The synopsis asks:

What is inflation? What causes it? What are the effects?

These questions move economics forward. It should be the role of economists to advance the field of study by seeking answers that represent the real-world economy, not to centrally plan the world.

Half a century later, in an excerpt from Dr. Per Bylund’s latest book , he writes:

To form an understanding of how the economy works, we must be humble before the fact that it exists and there is an order to it—it has a nature. The task of the economist is not to predict the specifics of the future but to uncover the underlying processes that produce the economic outcomes that we can observe. 

The Governor is honest, as economics does evolve through inquiry. But the Federal Reserve and mainstream economists stopped asking legitimate questions long ago. Both have become social messaging agents tasked with sculpting the future. They are not led by embracing thoughts different from their narrative. Rather, the only diversity the Board of Governors embraces are physical attributes.

Questions such as what is inflation have been purged from the lexicon of most PhD holders, replaced with non-economic matters such as how to achieve more diversity. As for using data to “impact the entire economy,” the Austrian could articulate how market intervention, such as expanding the money supply, has devastating consequences to the nation as a whole, and cite the history of such; this is the Austrian Business Cycle Theory .

Contrast this to the govern, who believes :

We are driven by data, which we collect in abundance.

The Fed’s ideology creates more answers than questions it resolves. Inquiry, self-reflection, acknowledgment of history and reality are all ignored. Instead, the Fed functions like a pre-programmed robot, where it's only capable of sticking to the script. Whether championing physical diversity at the expense of intellectual diversity, or touting the predictive ability of data, no matter the devastating consequences to the masses, it will never stop.

The Fed plays a zero-sum game. It cannot give to one person without taking from another. History shows they give most generously to the already rich and powerful. Mainstream economists have proven themselves equally as impotent. But when more and more people start asking serious questions: “What is inflation; what are its causes and effects?” It should lead them first to scrutinize the system and then to change the system. Once understood, the fraudulent nature of the central banking system cannot be ignored.

Prospective 2024 Candidates, Slash Governments

The Great Depression was forced by 8 years of 7.8 percent average annual True Money Supply increases; Great Inflation I, by 18 years of 9.9 percent increases; the Financial Crisis, by 12 years of 11.0 percent increases. By April 2022, Great Inflation II had already been forced by 14 years of...

The Great Depression was forced by 8 years of 7.8 percent average annual True Money Supply increases; Great Inflation I, by 18 years of 9.9 percent increases; the Financial Crisis, by 12 years of 11.0 percent increases. By April 2022, Great Inflation II had already been forced by 14 years of astounding 22.2 percent increases.

Now the outgoing congress has grabbed control of spending from December 24, 2022, through September 30, 2023. A full 4,155 pages of executive funding decisions were drafted in secret by a logrolling legislative committee, passed without meaningful debate by legislative majorities, and signed by the acting president. Of the outgoing senate’s Republicans, the yes votes totaled 36 percent and the non-votes totaled another 6 percent.

This logrolling isn’t constitutional. The executive power includes the power to set line-item priorities on how to best execute the laws. The legislative power only includes the power to set the overall total appropriation.

And this logrolling has devastating real-world costs . Legislators who vote for this logrolling, and executives who sign off on this logrolling, rob everyone who earns money and everyone who saves money.

Inflation must be stopped at its source

Great Inflation II won’t end until spending is slashed by politicians.

Executives’ duty is to only sign bills that they interpret to be constitutional, to only execute laws that they interpret to be constitutional, and to not execute the rest, removing these from spending. Candidates not currently holding an office should specify every law they would not execute.

Legislators’ duty is to only vote for those bills that they interpret to be constitutional, and to sponsor repeals of the rest, removing these from spending. Candidates not currently holding an office should specify every law they would sponsor a repeal bill on .

The Constitution makes its rules clear.

There must be no administrative agencies in any jurisdictions. Laws must provide every rule and sanction , must be passed by legislators and signed by executives, must be enforced by executives, and must have their cases opined on by judges.

There must be no violations of the national government’s enumerated powers . There is no power for any national-government criminal law other than on treason, on counterfeiting, and on the natural laws that bind national governments.

State and local governments must be of republican form , and this includes that their powers must be limited and enumerated. These governments should be out of schools , out of licensing , and out of zoning and permitting . They have criminal law to simplify and enforce, and that’s about it.

Politicians must compete to slash governments

When former president Donald Trump suggests that he would lay off the top managers , that action would at best just amount to hiring new managers, not slashing governments.

When Florida governor Ron DeSantis has signed increasing budgets , that hasn’t been slashing his government.

But when Representative Thomas Massie tried to force an on-the-record roll-call vote about the coronavirus stimulus , that was using his constitutional powers as fully as he could to slash governments.

Based on these politicians’ records to date, a competition between them wouldn’t even be close .

Inflation is an unconstitutional government power-grab —stealth taxation without representation.

Prospective 2024 candidates need to compete to slash unconstitutional government. Either current officeholders start slashing governments now and keep slashing governments, or we keep suffering until future officeholders start slashing governments eventually.

Constitutionalist candidates know this full well. They need to step forward and show how it’s done. If they’re defeated this time around, inflation will only continue, and as it does, their credibility will only grow.

Crises only ratchet up government when constitutionalists don’t step up, take risks, and take charge.

In the unfolding current crisis, voters are primed to support constitutionalists. If constitutionalists start stepping up—now—then instead of yet-another crisis getting leveraged to grow leviathan, this revolutionary time a crisis will again get leveraged to produce limited government.

Mississippi Legislature Votes Overwhelmingly to End Sales Taxes on Gold and Silver

State lawmakers of both houses have just voted overwhelmingly to exempt physical gold, silver, platinum, and palladium coins and bullion from the Mississippi state sales tax, sending the bill to Governor Tate Reeves (R) for his signature.

Senate Bill 2019 , sponsored by Sen. Chad McMahan (R – 6), passed yesterday out of the full senate by a vote of 47-2. This afternoon, Rep. Jody Steverson’s identical House Bill 1661 passed out of the full house chamber on an overwhelming voice vote.

Backed by the Sound Money Defense League , Money Metals Exchange , and in-state Mississippi dealers and investors, the legislative effort built upon last year's momentum. In 2022, a similar sales tax exemption bill had passed out of the Mississippi House of Representatives overwhelmingly but it missed a deadline in the Senate needed to receive a hearing.

If Gov. Reeves signs the bill next week (or if he simply chooses not to veto it), Mississippi will become the 43 rd state to exempt sales of sound money from state sales tax. The effective date is July 1, 2023.

Every one of Mississippi’s neighbors (Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee) have already stopped taxing the monetary metals. Most recently, Tennessee ended this tax in 2022, and Arkansas and Ohio eliminated this tax in 2021.

Under the status quo in Mississippi, citizens are discouraged from protecting their savings against the devaluation of the dollar because they are penalized with sales taxation for doing so.

Eliminating sales taxes on gold and silver is good public policy for several reasons:

• Levying sales taxes on precious metals is inappropriate.  Sales taxes are typically levied on final consumer goods. Computers, shirts, and shoes carry sales taxes because the consumer is "consuming" the good. Precious metals are inherently held for resale, not "consumption," making the application of sales taxes on precious metals inappropriate.
• Studies have shown that taxing precious metals is an inefficient form of revenue collection.  The results of one study involving Michigan show that any sales tax proceeds a state collects on precious metals are likely surpassed by the state revenue  lost  from conventions, businesses, and economic activity that are driven out of the state.
• Taxing gold and silver harms in-state businesses.  It’s a competitive marketplace, so buyers will take their business to neighboring states, such as Alabama or Louisiana (which have eliminated or reduced sales tax on precious metals), thereby undermining Mississippi jobs. Levying sales tax on precious metals harms in-state businesses who will lose business to out-of-state precious metals dealers. Investors can easily avoid paying $136.50 in sales taxes, for example, on a $1,950 purchase of a one-ounce gold bar.
• Taxing precious metals is unfair to certain savers and investors.  Gold and silver are held as forms of savings and investment. Mississippi does not tax the purchase of stocks, bonds, ETFs, currencies, and other financial instruments. 
• Taxing precious metals is harmful to citizens attempting to protect their assets.  Purchasers of precious metals aren't fat-cat investors. Most who buy precious metals do so in small increments as a way of saving money. Precious metals investors are purchasing precious metals as a way to preserve their wealth against the damages of inflation. Inflation harms the poorest among us, including pensioners, Mississippians on fixed incomes, wage earners, savers, and more. 

The trend across the nation is to eliminate taxes on precious metals. The state of Louisiana and Ohio both experimented briefly with reimposing sales taxes on precious metals purchases.  They both quickly reversed course (within two years) and reinstated their sales tax exemptions on precious metals -- because businesses, coin conventions, and state tax revenues were leaving the state.

After the two identical Mississippi bills are transmitted from their respective chambers, Governor Tate Reeves must sign or veto the legislation within 5 days after transmittal (excluding Sunday), or it becomes law without his signature.

In 2023, bills to restore sound, constitutional money have also been introduced in  Alaska , Iowa , West Virginia ,  South Carolina ,  Missouri ,  Minnesota ,  Tennessee , Montana, Idaho, Wyoming , Kansas, and more.

Currently Mississippi is tied for 45 th  out of 50 in the  2023 Sound Money Index . Passage of these measures would increase the state’s ranking dramatically.

What the US Government's Annual Financial Report Doesn't Tell You

Last week, two federal government entities produced financial reports. The Treasury Department issued the latest annual (FY2022) Financial Report of the United States Government (FRUSG), and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors issued its weekly H.4.1 report on the financial condition of the...

Last week, two federal government entities produced financial reports. The Treasury Department issued the latest annual (FY2022) Financial Report of the United States Government (FRUSG), and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors issued its weekly H.4.1 report on the financial condition of the Federal Reserve Banks. These reports deserve closer scrutiny by citizens and taxpayers.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen introduced the FRUSG with a traditional “Message from the Secretary of the Treasury.” Yellen’s message laid claim to much broader responsibilities than one might think appropriate for a report on the government’s finances.

Yellen opened with a paragraph describing positive trends in the overall economy, including how “the American economy continued its historically strong recovery from the pandemic amid serious global economic headwinds …” Again, this is a report describing the finances of the federal government, not the economy. The report theoretically secures accountability for government stewardship, or lack thereof, in the dollars it takes from citizens by force in taxes, or those it borrows on the backs of future taxpayers.

Yet Yellen chose to emphasize claims for the federal government’s responsibility for the (growing) overall economy -- not how well it managed the public purse. She went on to identify three specific laws passed by Congress and signed by the President she deemed responsible for strengthening “American” economic growth over the long-term. One of them was the “Inflation Reduction Act,” which she called:

… our nation’s most aggressive action to tackle the climate crisis, while also providing funding for fairer enforcement of our tax code and improved taxpayer service.

Her opening message didn’t identify how the “Inflation Reduction Act” would reduce inflation, however.

More importantly, she didn’t discuss how the laws she advertised mattered for the federal government’s financial performance – the key reason for an annual financial report in the first place.

Following these opening claims, Yellen asserted that the report serves as a “comprehensive view into our nation’s finances and economic outlook.” Consider the possibility of a dangerous extension of authority underneath this “comprehensive view.”

The report looks not at our federal government’s finances, but at “our nation’s finances and economic outlook.” If Yellen considers financial accountability to include not only accountability for the federal government’s finances, but the finances for all of us, what happens to the nature of private property? How about popular sovereignty?

Yellen then provided some brief (and selective) observations on results in the report, including “a decrease in the federal budget deficit.” Unfortunately, this decrease was to a deficit of $1.4 trillion, a still-negative-result and a rate of deterioration in government’s financial position more than 50% worse than the three years before the arrival of COVID and associated government spending responses.

And while focusing on the budget deficit, Yellen chose not to report on the more-economically-meaningful result in the accrual accounting measure called the “net operating cost.”

Take a look at the summary chart below, from p. 3 of the 250+ page report, showing the cash-accounting-based “budget deficit” and the accrual-accounting-based “net operating cost” over the last five fiscal years.

The trend in the red bars (the budget deficit) is much easier to see than the trend in in the white bars (the net operating cost). But the net operating cost trend is distinctly unfavorable, on closer inspection.

In closing her introductory message, Yellen repeated an alarmingly broad claim of responsibility for the scope of the federal government’s accountability:

It is my duty and pleasure to present the Fiscal Year 2022 Report to the American people, which demonstrates the government’s steadfast commitment to accountability and transparency in managing the nation’s finances.

The government’s (possessive “s”) “steadfast commitment” apparently relates to its role in managing the nation’s finances – not only the federal government’s finances. And an alarmingly possessive “s” continues to appear in another context later in the latest annual report.

On p. 65, in the financial statements section, the report includes an overall balance sheet for the federal government. Assets fell short of reported liabilities by about $30 trillion in FY 2021. In the latest fiscal year, that shortfall mushroomed to $34 trillion -- a $4 trillion deterioration far in excess of the budget deficit strategically emphasized by Yellen in her opening message.

Introducing the unbalanced balance sheet, the report delivers (on p. 55) the following comforting words:

There are, however, other significant resources available to the government that extend beyond the assets presented in these Balance Sheets. Those resources include stewardship PP&E in addition to the government’s sovereign powers to tax and set monetary policy.

The government should be OK, the implication goes, despite the picture in the Balance Sheets, given the government’s “sovereign powers to tax, and to set monetary policy.” The government can take away the money of the people, or inflate the value of their money away.

This report theoretically secures financial accountability of the government to We The People – the real sovereign, in our United States. Yet the government claims to possess the sovereign power to tax the People to assuage any concern for its unbalanced balance sheet.

Yes, our government has the power to tax. But does it possess, as an entity reporting to We The People, the sovereign power to do so? Isn’t our nation grounded in popular sovereignty? Do we have to bend and bow to our Sovereign?

And speaking of the “sovereign” power to set monetary policy, what about the other report that came out last week – the Federal Reserve Board’s weekly H.4.1 report on the financial condition of the Federal Reserve Banks?

A longer story, but in a single week, we had a $3 billion increase in a curious negative liability called “earning remittances due to the U.S. Treasury.” Granted, it’s only one week, but that’s a big chunk of change on an annualized basis. These are effectively financial losses in the Federal Reserve Banks whose financial statements are not consolidated in the Federal Government’s overall financial statements .

More to read, and report on, in the days ahead.

CNBC’s Version of the Fed's 2% Inflation Target

On Saturday, Dr. Mark Thornton published a 3-minute recording for Minor Issues podcast on The Fed’s 2% Inflation Target . It had the usual honesty, integrity and simplicity readers of the Mises Institute are...

On Saturday, Dr. Mark Thornton published a 3-minute recording for Minor Issues podcast on The Fed’s 2% Inflation Target . It had the usual honesty, integrity and simplicity readers of the Mises Institute are accustomed, with the introduction reading:

Mark Thornton explains the target as another smokescreen that was originally intended to stabilize monetary policy, currencies, and exchange rates, but has become a justification for inflation and central bank manipulation.

As if in response, two days later CNBC published The curious history of the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation targeting, explained . Stark is the contrast:

The 2% inflation target is key to the Federal Reserve’s vision for stable prices in the U.S. economy, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Someone is not telling the truth.

Either central banks use the 2% target to deceive the public into their various anti-capitalistic interventions, for public detriment; or, they use 2% as a planning tool to achieve an ill-defined notion of “stable prices” for the public good.

Past and current successes at meeting the 2% target appear to have no bearing on its continued use. However, it is the origin story which reveals over 30 years of deception.

But, “the 2% inflation target, it’s relatively arbitrary,” Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, told CNBC.

CNBC correctly sources the arbitrary 2% target to New Zealand, who adopted it in 1989. They found PhD holder Arthur Grimes, of Victoria University, who happily takes credit for one of the worst, if not the worst, economic policies ever.

As his story goes:

In the late 1980s, New Zealand was facing incredibly high inflation when freshly minted Ph.D. economist Grimes started his work at the central bank, which at the time was not independent from the government. “We were saying, ‘OK, if we have independence, what should we target? Interest rates or the money supply?’” Grimes said. “And I just one day, I said, ‘Well, actually, what are we trying to achieve? We’re trying to achieve price stability. Why don’t we just have an inflation target?’”

Our fate was sealed.

With no regard to anything that at least could substantially be defended, it was the whimsical fancy of a “freshly minted” PhD holder who came up with the idea. We’ll never know where we’d be today if they fought high (price) inflation by simply stopping the manipulation of interest rates and the money supply, as they could have done.

Unfortunately, the idea of 2% spread in popularity across the world, where as recent as 2017:

… some economists  wrote a letter  to the Federal Open Market Committee, making the case for a higher target.

They even cite a professor from John Hopkins who wrote:

There’s no evidence that 3% or 4% inflation does substantial damage relative to 2% inflation.

Rather than mainstream economists, media, or policy makers asking serious questions about the 2% strategy, we get continued support of the conspicuously false narrative. With reported Consumer Price Index figures much higher than anyone wishes to see, any memories of wanting a high inflation target becomes laughable.

To add insult to injury, CNBC concludes that now, in “post-pandemic normal,” central banks are coming under scrutiny for inflation targeting. Despite the fact that in 2020, I wrote about that exact topic in The Origins of the 2 Percent Inflation Target , or that Austrians have been writing about inflation for over a century before me. Yet we should never be surprised. A society who uses dishonest money is, by definition, a fraudulent society. This deception gets interwoven into the very fabric of all our institutions and then permeates across all levels of our interactions with each other. We must never celebrate capital destruction or economic absurdities. This is an origin story that should only be lamented.

• Antipolitics
• Big Government
• Biographies
• Book Reviews
• Booms and Busts
• Bureaucracy and Regulation
• Central Banks
• Coordination
• Corporate Welfare
• Cronyism and Corporatism
• Decentralization and Secession
• Economic Freedom
• Economic Policy
• Financial Markets
• Free Markets
• From the Archives
• Global Economy
• Immigration
• Labor and Wages
• Legal System
• Libertarianism
• Macroeconomics
• Majority Rule
• Media and Culture
• Monetary Policy
• Money and Banks
• Paternalism
• Price Controls
• Progressivism
• Property Rights
• Protectionism and Free Trade
• Rationalism
• Taxes and Spending
• The Entrepreneur
• The Environment
• The Police State
• U.S. Economy
• U.S. History
• Unemployment
• War and Foreign Policy
• World History

Austrian School

• Austrian Economics Overview
• Business Cycles
• Calculation and Knowledge
• Capital and Interest Theory
• Entrepreneurship
• Fiscal Theory
• Gold Standard
• History of the Austrian School of Economics
• Interventionism
• Monetary Theory
• Money and Banking
• Money Supply
• Monopoly and Competition
• Other Schools of Thought
• Philosophy and Methodology
• Political Theory
• Private Property
• Production Theory
• Subjectivism
• Value and Exchange

Recommended

Drudge report traffic plunges as content turns against trump, social links for keith j. kelly.

• View Author Archive
• email the author
• follow on twitter
• Get author RSS feed

Contact The Author

Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.

The Drudge Report posted a 45 percent decline in web traffic in September as the site alienated its core readers by turning against President Trump ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

The data — derived from comScore, which tracks the industry — were released in a report by TheRighting, a website that analyzes traffic to right-leaning websites. TheRighting told The Post that the Drudge Report had 1,291,000 unique visitors in September, according to data supplied by comScore, down from 2,340,000 in the same month a year ago.

September’s eye-popping decline marks the ninth month in a row that the political news aggregation website run by reclusive founder Matt Drudge has seen traffic fall, TheRighting said .

The plunge comes at a time when demand for political news has been soaring on both sides of the aisle leading up to a highly charged presidential election. And experts say it’s directly tied to the Drudge Report’s sudden and unexpected switch earlier this year from a conservative-leaning news outlet to one that’s decidedly anti-Trump.

“It’s catastrophic what has happened to his web traffic,” said Matt Lysiak, author of “The Drudge Revolution.” “He’s on a fast track to irrelevance.”

Lysiak says some of the Drudge Report’s suffering can be traced to competition from social media services like Twitter. “But what accelerated his decline is when he shifted to the left and turned on Trump and lost many of his core readers. By any criteria, this shift was a complete disaster for him,” Lysiak said.

“Liberals are never going to love Drudge, even if he’s not linking to stories about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden,” Lysiak said of the website that made its name in the 1990s by being the first outlet to report on the brewing Monica Lewinsky scandal. “They’ll always remember what happened with Bill Clinton.”

Drudge had been an ardent promoter of Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election and was reportedly invited to the White House in 2017. But the site and its founder have drawn criticism from readers, including the president, for linking to largely negative stories about the president in recent months.

Stories topping the Drudge Report on Friday included a link to a Washington Post article about Trump’s public musings over a potential loss to Joe Biden and a Pennlive.com story about growing regional delays in the US Postal Service’s delivery times.

“Congratulations Dan. You, Breitbart and others have decimated the business at Drudge,” the president tweeted earlier this month. “It’s gone the way of the @NBA, ratings down 70%. People want the TRUTH! Drudge Report sold out, suffered a massive ‘nervous breakdown’. Happening @FoxNews also???”

The “Dan” whom Trump congratulated appears to be Dan Bongino, founder of fast-growing Bongino.com, which saw its unique visitor traffic surge 780 percent in September, according to TheRighting.

Drudge, who has become a topic of conversation among media and Wall Street circles in recent months due to rumors that he’s seeking a minority investor, did not return calls seeking comment.

Growing appetites for political news, meanwhile, have helped traffic to Fox News’ website grow 9 percent in September compared to a year ago, with 104.1 million unique visitors, The Righting said. That lags behind CNN, which pulled 144.5 million unique visitors, up 11 percent, but beats the New York Times brands’ 95.1 million unique visitors in September, up 3 percent compared to the same month a year ago, and the Washington Post with 91.6 million unique visitors, also up 3 percent from a year ago, TheRighting said.

Other right-leaning news sites that have benefited this election cycle are the Washington Examiner, which pulled 15.9 million unique visitors, up 11 percent, and The Blaze, which attracted 12.3 million unique visitors, up 106 percent, according to TheRighting.

The fastest-growing sites in September were Bongino.com, up 780 percent to 2.6 million unique visitors, according to TheRighting; The Gateway Pundit, up 456 percent to 5.7 million, and CNS News, up 417 percent to 3.9 million unique visitors.

“Strong audience growth for most conservative websites continues to be driven by a heated news environment that shows no signs of cooling off,” said Howard Polskin, president and chief curator at TheRighting, whose tagline is “Alerting liberal audiences to today’s headlines from the right.”

“Notable stories in September 2020 included the escalation of the pandemic, the dramatic revelations in Bob Woodward’s latest book on President Trump, the fireworks that characterized the first Trump-Biden debate, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the contentious nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and the explosive story in the New York Times about Trump’s tax returns,” Polskin said. “These stories played like a reality show and kept audiences thoroughly engaged throughout the month as they kept turning to news media to learn the latest unfolding developments.”

Down last month was right-wing conspiracy site InfoWars, founded by Alex Jones, which saw traffic fall 1 percent for the fifth month in a row, The Righting said. The Daily Caller also saw traffic drop 9 percent for the month as it recorded its second monthly decline in a row.

Share this article: