Politics & Power Quote by Matt Drudge

Drudge’s line lands like a dare: if you still think elected officials are the apex of authority, you’re reading last decade’s civics textbook. The bluntness is the point. By saying the media is “comparable to government,” then immediately upgrading it to something that “probably passes” government, he’s not making a careful institutional argument; he’s staking out a worldview in which attention is the real currency and whoever controls the flow of information controls the terms of reality.

The hedging adverb “probably” is doing sly work. It keeps the claim from sounding like a conspiracy screed while still inviting the listener to nod along. Drudge positions himself as the streetwise observer calling out what polite society won’t: that power has migrated from formal offices to the loud, fast, omnipresent machinery that frames events before lawmakers can react. Government may command the police and the purse, but media can create the crisis, crown the villain, and dictate the narrative timeline.

Context matters. Drudge rose in the late-1990s internet era, when the old gatekeepers were losing their monopoly and scandals could be detonated online before newspapers had finished their fact-checking. The quote carries the DNA of that moment: a populist impatience with institutions, plus a self-justifying wink from someone building influence by bypassing them.

Subtextually, it’s also a warning and a flex. If media is government-level power, it deserves scrutiny like government. Yet it rarely submits to the same accountability. Drudge is describing the imbalance - and benefiting from it.