Over the past few days, the usual suspects of ‘Twitter Trolldom’ have ganged up on Salena Zito.
Yes, you read that right, Salena Zito.
One of the most well-respected, well-liked, and objective journos out there … attacked by a group of anonymous haters accusing her of everything under the sun. Salena wrote a fairly EPIC and long thread defending herself and her work and we absolutely encourage folks to take a look at ALL of it.
Last weekend an anonymous newly-created-for-the purpose Twitter handle @rod_inanimate tweeted a thread filled with misrepresentations & false accusations.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
In short, they lied, in an attempt to discredit my hard-earned reputation, and my hard work.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
The first one “So, @SalenaZito blocked me and I couldn’t figure out why. All I’ve done was ask her a simple question (etc.)" begins with a false premise.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
I never blocked this handle – a handle just created recently. A close look at the screen shot photo they use of my alleged block is missing a handle name in the shot – because I didn’t block it.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
The account was trying to make it look like Salena was scared of him (her?) with a block, which it sounds like from this thread was a lie.
Shocker.
The second tweet refers to a story in the New York Times by a different journalist about one of the women in the book I co-wrote. This NYT ran a correction because the woman was not identified as a Republican by that author. I did not write the New York Times story.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
In the book, Amy Giles-Mauer, the woman in question, is clearly identified as not just a Republican, but as an engaged GOP primary voter.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
Much of the book is focused on the right-of-center voters Clinton unsuccessfully sought to convert to her campaign: female voters and college educated voters who’d backed Rs in the past.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
The book’s thesis clearly states it sought to understand why so many of those targeted voters resisted both social pressure and Clinton’s campaign aimed at them.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
The book also probed why evangelical voters, long Republican, stuck with a candidate who did not seem to share their values.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
Discomfort with Trump as GOP nominee extended from the grass roots all the way to GOP activists, donors & elected officials – a fact noted in the book in measuring how few high profile elected Republicans supported Trump in the primaries and how many deserted him in October, 2016
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
The story of realignment is always a twin story of new people added to a coalition and the other half grappling with whether to stay when it was no longer comfortable.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
The hate tweeter goes on in to identify six people in the book and attempt to discredit their place in the book, proving he did not read the book or understand its premise. They’re all presumably outed as hidden Republicans.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
Here’s where she really started breaking things down:
1.) Dave Rubbico. The anonymous tweeter notes that Mr. Rubbico says he is a long time Democrat who in the beginning liked Obama.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
He also states Rubbico is a Republican elected official; he became a GOP committee member until one year AFTER I interviewed him and well after the book went to print.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
This migration of Obama voters toward the GOP is not a hidden component of the book; it’s part of its thesis.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
2.) Dawn Martin said that early on in the election, her vote was up for grabs. Like many Republican women she struggled with Trump’s comportment.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
In the end she voted for him and this year (one year after I interviewed her) she decided to run for local office for the very first time in her tiny rural county.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
3.) Neil Shaffer is identified in the book as a “solid, rock-ribbed conservative” (page 195), who has been involved in local Republican politics and is the county chairman of the local party.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
As a devout Christian, Mr. Shaffer supported other Republicans in the nomination process and struggled with his general election vote.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
As a devout Christian, Mr. Shaffer supported other Republicans in the nomination process and struggled with his general election vote.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
4.) Cynthia Sacco is exactly who she said she was, an independent minded voter raised in a Democratic family who migrated eventually to the GOP. But not always. “I flipped back and forth, safety and security were big issues for me, so I would vote the person, especially locally.”
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
5.) Patty Bloomstine, in our interview and in the book, says she gave money to Kathy Dahlkemper a moderate pro-life former democratic congresswoman turned Erie County executive when she first ran for congress.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
The chapter that includes Bloomstine begins with this sentence: “If any group in the ultimate Donald Trump coalition was unexpected, it was the group of suburban women who stuck with him after a year’s worth of campaigning designed to cleave them away from the Republican column."
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
There are a handful of times I do not use people’s names in a story; they don’t want their lives or businesses destroyed by anonymous trolls as this cyber bully has tried to do to me.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
And after seeing what these folks are trying to do to Salena, who could blame them?
Every profiled person in the book was audio-taped and videotaped & their interviews transcribed.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
Everything in that thread is a malicious lie concocted by people who don’t know the facts and seek only to harass me online not honestly with their own names, but with anonymous handles.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
Get it girl.
It might be just one person – with an agenda. It’s their right to criticize me anonymously, but they are not entitled to deny the facts. And I won’t deny my readers the truth.
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
I tape my interviews. I travel the country. I do my job thoroughly and diligently and that’s why my work is widely read and respected – and no professional Twitter troll will dissuade me or my employers from giving voice to the Americans who too often are ignored.
-30-— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 29, 2018
Seth and Bethany Mandel, and other Conservatives stood up for Salena and defended her (Bethany went as far as to take the ‘hate-thread’ in question apart tweet by tweet), but even today there are dozens of low-follow, anonymous accounts talking smack about Salena, some even claiming she should be fired.
And yet Salena continues to write and work while the haters screech into the Twittersphere.
Deal with it.
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