If you’ve been on Twitter today, there’s a very good chance you came across this quote from a Trump voter and hurricane survivor in Florida who told New York Times reporter Patricia Mazzei that the president is “not hurting the people he needs to be hurting”:
This quote in a story about how the President's shutdown is hurting rural Florida reveals a lot about the mentality of certain people pic.twitter.com/fnmf3lbt7x
— Alberto Cairo (@albertocairo) January 8, 2019
The quote was immediately spun as Trump voters wanting “cruelty” and they “voted for it”:
This was indeed one of the more revealing things a Trump supporter has said. They *wanted* cruelty. They explicitly voted for it. Just not any cruelty against *them*. https://t.co/eS9DWCI9Of
— David Roberts (@drvox) January 8, 2019
But, SURPRISE! That’s not what the woman quoted in the article meant. Here’s Mazzei with (late) follow-up:
Lots of reaction to this story, thank you all for reading it! A little more on that last quote that some of you have asked about, where Crystal Minton said President Trump was “not hurting the people he needs to be hurting” https://t.co/1zPXpwbS5J 1/
— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) January 8, 2019
Ms. Minton made clear in the context of our conversations that she was expressing frustration at the situation that she and her colleagues are facing in the shutdown, that ordinary people are caught in a political fight they didn’t ask for 2/
— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) January 8, 2019
Recommended
It seemed clear when I talked to her that she didn’t mean she wanted to literally “hurt” anyone. And she reiterated in a conversation with me today that she doesn’t. She’s just angry at politicians in power. And that’s how she expressed it 3/
— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) January 8, 2019
She never said she thought immigrants (or any other group) should be punished. She’s seen comments suggesting she holds animosity toward others. She’s appalled by the thought. “I just don’t want people like me to be used as leverage over there in Washington,” she told me today 4/
— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) January 8, 2019
This sense of frustration toward people in power and the political system was broadly shared among people I interviewed for this story. They felt they were being hurt and that no one in power seemed to care 5/
— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) January 8, 2019
In my experience, that’s a sentiment shared among voters generally since the presidential campaign began in 2015 /end
— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) January 8, 2019
So, why did this quote get included in the first place?
***
Related:
New York Times tried really hard to avoid ‘gendered thinking’ in its piece about female Democrats https://t.co/kcB34QH0vI
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) January 7, 2019
The New York Times makes a great argument that the federal government is way too big https://t.co/yYTV3FflfW
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) January 6, 2019
New York Times crossword puzzle editor apologizes for letting a racial slur slip past https://t.co/xJDOROQwvg
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) January 3, 2019
Join the conversation as a VIP Member