Facebook on Thursday repeatedly removed posts by New York Post reporter Salena Zito of her most recent opinion piece on why Trump supporters will not care about Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort convictions.
Facebook removed the posts by Zito and some of her readers with an automated explanation that said: “We removed this post because it looks like spam and doesn’t follow our Community Standards.”
After Zito and other journalists emailed Facebook to inquire about the matter, Facebook restored her posts without explanation.
Update original post restored with no response to any of my questions. https://t.co/47bHRblWUb
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 23, 2018
Her piece, titled, “Why Trump’s supporters won’t care about Cohen and Manafort’s convictions,” is about how those who voted for Trump in 2016 will not be deterred from voting for him again in 2020 by a recent conviction of his former campaign manager Paul Manafort or charges against his former lawyer Michael Cohen.
Her op-ed stated:
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s news that both former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his lawyer Michael Cohen were found on the wrong side of the law in separate court cases, the question asked most frequently by the press, Democrats and “Never Trump” Republicans is, “Where do Trump voters go now?”
The answer is the same that it has always been since they first started asking it Nov. 9, 2016: With Trump.
She detailed a conversation with a woman in her mid-40s who lives in a suburb just outside of Columbus, Ohio, a battleground state, who voted for Trump in 2016 and still supports Trump despite the recent Manafort and Cohen news. The woman, who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution, told Zito:
“For decades I have been inspired by aspiring politicians and elected officials who took to the podium or the camera and delivered poetic speeches to earn my trust and my support. They would sway me with expressive words and artfully delivered promises,” she said.
…“It took me a while to realize those words weren’t theirs, but skillfully crafted sentences that had been massaged and focus-group tested by a full staff of speechwriters and strategists.”
She told Zito that although she cannot abide by anything he tweets, finds his speeches hard to unscramble and considers his “morals in the gutter,” she would vote for him again because “he delivers results.”
“It’s just that simple,” she said.
The woman cited the tax reform bill, the remaking of the judiciary, his repeal of regulations that have improved the economic conditions in Ohio, his picks for the Supreme Court, and “his unflinching manner in taking on the establishment wings of both political parties as her reasons.”
Zito, who famously said, “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally,” summarized why Trump supporters will continue to support him:
This new conservative populist coalition is not the fluke the political class hoped it was. Donald Trump did not cause it, he is just the result of it, so no matter what he does, it continues. It is predicated on them, not him.
The coalition is a strike at not just tone deafness in both Congress and the White House but also high levels of incompetence, negligence and shoddy performance at agencies, as well as inept social services, a bloated and incompetent bureaucracy, endless wars and multinational agreements and treaties that don’t benefit average people.”
These voters knew who Trump was going in, they knew he was a thrice-married, Playmate-dating, Howard Stern regular who had the morals of an alley cat. They were willing to look past all of that because of how institutions had failed their communities for three consecutive presidencies.
Right now the value of Trump to the Trump voter is he is all that stands between them and handing the keys to Washington back over to the people inside Washington. That’s it. He’s their only option. You’ve got to pick the insiders or him.
Zito then discusses the difficulty the Democratic Party may have in finding their own Trump, when some of their members are running on platforms diametrically opposed to him, such as “Abolish ICE.”
She wrote, “as it stands we only really only have two parties; the party of the governing elite and the party of Trump.”
Read Zito’s piece here.
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