For reasons that have yet to be adequately explained, Facebook removed several posts by New York Post reporter Salena Zito on Thursday, leading many observers to once again question the tech giants motives and biases as it pertains to conservative pundits. Zito had written an op-ed for the Post on why President Trump’s supporters would not abandon him in the wake of the legal problems stemming from the conviction of Paul Manafort and the plea deal of Michael Cohen.
Facebook removed the posts and delivered a simple message: “We removed this post because it looks like span and doesn’t follow our Community Standards.”
After Zito contacted Facebook and even wrote an article in the New York Post about the controversial removal, Facebook restored the posts without further elaboration.
Keep in mind, this was not a particularly raucous article. It wasn’t like Zito was writing a piece of the “lock her up” type or something that could have just as easily been reprinted at Infowars. It was a well thought out piece about why Trump’s supporters will continue to stick by him, no matter what kind of shenanigans Robert Mueller and his team get up to.
“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?’” Zito wrote. “The answer is the same that it has always been since they first started asking it Nov. 9, 2016: With Trump.”
Zito goes on to expound on conversations she’s had with Trump supporters who have stuck by the president’s side despite the avalanche of bad headlines coming from the mainstream media over the past week.
“This new conservative populist coalition is not the fluke the political class hoped it was,” she wrote. “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.”
All of this to say that it was a reasonable piece of journalism focused on what makes Trump’s base special and why it is unlikely to come unraveled just because some marginal figures close to the president have been charged/convicted of crimes. Especially since those crimes are, at best, only tangentially related to Trump and his campaign. And unrelated to Russian interference to the election in any way, shape, or form. Which is, as a few Americans may recall, supposed to be Mueller’s focus in all of this.
Facebook is doing everything it can to prove to the rest of the liberals in Silicon Valley and Washington that it won’t “allow” Russians and trolls to swing another election to Republicans. Unfortunately, this dedication to stamping out what amounts to little more than Hillary Clinton’s Big Excuse is having a profound and deleterious impact on an important platform for public debate in 2018.
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