Let's Find Common Ground - Why Trump is Popular in Small-Town America: Salena Zito

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Unlike the vast majority of journalists who cover American politics, Salena Zito lives far away from the centers of power and wealth. She writes about small-town America and the parts of the country that much of the media doesn’t cover. Zito's commitment to understanding the heartland of America is evident in her frequent trips along the nation’s back roads. She drives thousands of miles, avoiding interstates and major cities, to grasp the pulse of rural and small-town AmericaHer insights about American voters are especially valuable in this election year. In this podcast, we learn why so many people who live in rural and small-town America support Donald Trump and the populist coalition that reshaped the Republican Party. Salena Zito writes columns and reports on politics for the Washington Examiner, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and the New York Post. She is coauthor of "The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.”

Unlike the great majority of journalists who cover American politics, Selena Zito lives far away from the centers of power and wealth. Some would argue that she lives in the middle of nowhere, in flyover country. But Selena says this is America. Everywhere is the middle of somewhere. When you get out there, it is energizing. It is wonderful. I mean, that doesn't mean there's not sadness or despair or problems. However, that American spirit of be wanting to be part of something bigger than themselves

is evident in everything that you see. This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Richard Davies. And I'm Ashley Miltite. Political reporter Selina Zito writes about small town America and the parts of the country that much of the media doesn't cover. She leaves her home in Western Pennsylvania and drives thousands of miles across the country on back roads. Her insights are especially valuable in this election year. And on this show, we'll learn more about why so many people

who live in rural and small town America support Donald Trump and the populist coalition that's reshaped the Republican Party. Selena writes columns on politics for the Washington Examiner, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the New York Post. She's the author of The Great Revolt Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics. We spoke with her in 2021. Salina, you write commentary and report on politics from a different perspective than most journalists. What do you say is distinctive about your writing? Well, I think a couple of things are distinctive. I don't live in

the center of power and wealth. That's where the biggest news rooms are in this country. I'm not inside the wire. I'm not inside the bubble and that doesn't make my reporting better. It just makes my perspective a little bit different in how I cover people. One of the things I think that makes my reporting different is that I try to treat each story that I write as though I'm from the locality. And so I travel across the country. I just

got back from 7,000 miles across the country. I usually do a north-south one in the spring and towards the end of the summer east west. And I don't need to take back roads. I don't fly. I don't take interstates and I try to really get a sense and a feeling of the places that I'm covering and the people I'm covering by acting like the local by you know, going to church there or going to a local high school football game or basketball game. People make fun of this. A lot of reporters in DC make fun of the fact that I go into diners. Well, first of all, that's the only restaurant that's out there. And second of all,

diner food is darn good food. The other thing that is different is that I grew up in this area and I never left it. That's the area around Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania. What's special about the city? It's sort of the Paris of Appalachia. However, it still has culturally connected to both Appalachia and the Midwest. So I have a general understanding of how people think and their behaviors, anywhere from religion being way more important to them and family connections way more important to them than political activism such as maybe like climate change. And when you report, when you mentioned you've come back

from this 7,000 mile road trip, how long do you spend in each place? I mean, do you embed more than you would say the average journalist does from DC or New York? Yeah, definitely. Well, first of all, there's a lot of times there've been a lot of areas, it's a repeat for me, right? Because I've been around and I've gone to a lot of these areas throughout my career.

I usually try to spend a few days there. I always dedicate a lot of research into the route I'm taking. A lot of reporting is just spontaneous, right? You see someone interesting, you strike up a conversation and it turns into something interesting. So, you know, I make sure that I have really researched before I leave, but also after I get back, I make sure that I understood what I saw. That sort of led on to this, Selena, something you wrote in a recent piece. This piece is called The Restorative Power of the American People and you wrote, turn on social media,

cable news or the national news networks and you would be inclined to believe that we loathe those who are different than us. You would also be inclined to believe that everyone who lives outside the urban centers is backward, stupid and racist. I was so interested that you wrote we in there. Tell me about that. Well, I was talking collectively about how we view the American news product. If I had to reflect on what our biggest problem is right now in terms of the divide widening rather than coming back together is that the people that report on you and I and everyone across the country are also living in the same places that all of our cultural curators live. I mean corporations, institutions, academia,

but also sports entities. Most of their headquarters are in these super zip codes and everyone that lives around them and works around them have the same shared values. They went to the same kind of school. Their kids went to the same kind of school. Their kids go to the same kind of school. They shop at the same place and they have shared values. There is nothing wrong with that.

However, what it is is completely different than the people they're covering. And a lot of these reporters, you know, don't sit in a pew every Sunday. They don't own a gun. They don't know how to operate a gun. They don't know how to shoot a gun. So they don't understand, you know, they didn't go to a state school.

They didn't go to a community college. So when they're writing about the other people, the outsiders, they're writing it from their point of view and their experiences. And I think that's what makes my experiences, my viewpoint a little different because I've done all of those things. You mentioned community college. One statistic that jumped out at me recently is that over 40% of all undergraduates in America go to community colleges. is that over 40% of all undergraduates in America go to community colleges, but you'd never know that

from the coverage of higher education in much of the media. Right, because the coverage is coming from people that went to these elite schools. But you have a different perspective. Someone is going to feel completely foreign to you who went to a community college or a trade school. And there are a lot of incredibly successful people out there that never stepped foot in the halls of higher education. And I think we have been fed this ideal since

our troops came back from World War II, that the only way to be successful is to attend college and that grew and grew and grew. But along the way we started looking down at people who went to a trade school, at people who went to shop class. Well we still need our washing machines fixed, we still more importantly we need our air condition need our washing machines fixed. We still more importantly, we need our air conditionings and furnaces fixed. And then what about the people that provide the energy for us to turn the light on? How much have we disparaged people that have worked in coal mines, but we wouldn't be able to pick up this phone if they weren't working in the coal mine, we wouldn't be able to turn our

lights on. The same goes with natural gas. So I just think we need to do a better job when we're reporting on things rather than turning people into a villain. Speaking of reporting, what prompted you to become a reporter? What prompted you to become a reporter? Well, I come from a long line of newspaper people. My great-great-grandfather, my great-grandfather, and my grandfather were all newsmen. And it was something that I always wanted to do along the way, having children got in the way. But once my kids were up and out, I pursued what I wanted to do

and now y'all are stuck with me. And both of my grandparents were great, in particular grandmothers, were great storytellers. They come from that long tradition of handing down stories. And I think that's where my love of telling stories comes from. My grandfather was an executive at the Pittsburgh Press. And so he opened my eyes to newspapers and my love of newspapers. And he always brought newspapers from different parts of the country home.

And I couldn't wait to dive into them. They were always sort of fascinating to me. But the storytelling comes from my grandmothers, in particular my Italian grandmother, who didn't have an education beyond fourth grade. But boy, could she share stories. I'm curious, do you think what you were just talking about, the divide between who covers,

who does the covering, the coverage in America and who is covered, did that exist to the same extent in your mind say 30 years ago or has it got progressively worse? Well, it's gotten progressively worse because we've lost so many local newspapers. The only time people turned on national news was at six o'clock to watch CBS, ABC or NBC. When I was growing up, there were three newspapers in the town. In fact, even 10 years ago, when I was working in Pittsburgh at a Pittsburgh newspaper, there were two healthy, thriving, competing local newspapers. And that's where people got their news.

We have now thousands or hundreds of counties, I think even to the thousands of counties that don't have a local news. We have states where the state capitals aren't covered by local news. I mean, you need someone in a county to cover that school board, to cover the water authority. They need to be held accountable. And we just don't have the news organizations to make that happen. So that's why I think we didn't have this problem before.

Enter in cable news. That has hastened the divide. But I think more than anything, has has made the divide on how journalists cover the rest of the country is social media, is in particular Twitter, which by the way, I left because it's a sewer. But the problem with Twitter is, is too many journalists look at as a reliable way to understand the whole country. There is a Pew study. This is from a Pew Research Center. The Pew Research Center study concluded

that just 10% of users produced an astounding 92% of all tweets. 69% of the highly prolific users are Democrats. Breaking down that number even further reveals that the Democrats on Twitter are predominantly liberal, far more than Democrats who aren't Twitter users. In other words, anyone reading Twitter to get any sense of what even average Democrats think will get a skewed impression. And a lot of journalists use Twitter as their barometer of

what's going on in the country, and it's just not. That begs the question. And it's actually one of the big reasons why we invited you onto this podcast for Common Ground Committee. And that is, what community, and that is what misunderstandings are there on the part of metropolitan elites, including journalists, about the people you cover and live with, people who live in rural America, people who live in small towns and cities that don't get a fair shake when it comes to media coverage? So the majority of them believe that anyone outside of the larger metropolitan areas don't believe in climate change.

Of course, everyone believes that the climate has changed. Ever since we were in first grade and they showed us dinosaurs and told us the ice age, wipe them out, we understood that the climate has changed. In fact, we were all in this together in the 70s, if anyone is out there old enough to remember this iconic ad with a Native American

standing on the shoreline with all this pollution and smog and a tear running down his face. Wasn't a political ad. We were all wanting to fight pollution so it didn't affect the earth. When it became a sort of battering ram that Democrats used beginning with Al Gore to divide people, that's when the assumption was made

that conservatives do not believe in climate change. Some of the most thoughtful and careful conservationists of the earth, who are almost all Republicans and are conservatives, are farmers. They spend a day or a week or hours with a farmer and the lengths that they go to to make sure that the water is safe, to make sure the soil is safe, is, and then we're talking on small farms, is really unbelievable. Spend any time with people that work in the shale industry or the coal industry. The great lengths that people go to to make sure that that water is clear, that goes anywhere near either of those

bodies is very important. Salina Zito speaking with us on Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley. I'm Richard. Our shows are produced for Common Ground Committee, which works in the bridging community, telling stories and building programs that push back against a narrative of division, distrust and polarization. Yeah, one of our initiatives is the Common Ground Scorecard. You can find out how your governor and senators and representatives score on how they reach out to the other side. These ratings show you the difference between someone who simply digs in their heels and scores well with hardcore members of their own party and those politicians who collaborate

and reach out to the other side. You can learn a lot more about the process as well as the performance of your own senators and representatives at commongroundscorecard.org. And you can support the Scorecard, this podcast and the work of Common Ground Committee at common ground committee dot o r g. Now more from our interview with Selena Zito. Moving from climate change to guns, there's polling research from the 2016 election about women who own guns, who said that issue influenced the Burbnish college educated women cited the second amendment as one of the reasons that they chose Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.

Most of these women identified themselves as feminists. So what does feminism mean? It's empowerment. That just was completely went over the head of most journalists. They couldn't understand that a suburban woman that lives in Ashtabula County, Ohio, why that woman would want a gun and they don't is just incredibly foreign to them. The other really important thing is a lot of people believe that Donald Trump's election caused this conservative populist coalition. No, he's the result of it, but he did not cause it and it is not going away. A journalist from New York will say, Oh, you know, it's a cult of Trump.

No, it's a rejection of the status quo. They're letting people know, Hey y'all, I'm still out here and I'm not going away. It's not about Trump. It's about them. And maybe this question is partially a follow-on to what you've just been talking about, but you've written that there's a crisis of mistrust in the parts of America that you cover. Can you talk about that a little bit? What's going on there? So that's nothing new. I would argue that that began right around Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War. It has been slow and incremental, but however, it has been consistently

growing. 70% of us trusted the media in 1968. Today, that number is completely flipped. Mistrust comes from a lot of things, beginning with Watergate and beginning with the Vietnam War. And then the media problem has really escalated as cable news has become more dominant. Anybody can go on cable news and say whatever they want. There's also a mistrust around our corporations.

If anyone's familiar with a Hoover vacuum cleaner, right? Hoover vacuum cleaner made in America. Mr. Hoover lived four blocks from his factory. He not only knew everyone that worked for him, he also knew who his consumers were He went to church with them every Sunday his wife sat on the school board He knew his company and he knew the values of the people that bought his product today We don't know anybody that owns a company

it's owned by a bunch of venture capitalists that that are either located in Los Angeles and or bunch of venture capitalists that are either located in Los Angeles and or, you know, New York or Chicago or DC and they have no connectivity to the people that are buying their product. Hollywood, the same thing. Hollywood has the exact same problem because they're so out of touch with the people that want to just sit down in front of their television with their family and be entertained. Many listeners, especially from the liberal side are going to say, oh, you're just speaking

as a conservative. But I know that one of the many Democrats who you've interviewed is Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia who is a centrist? Who weans left on some matters and leans more conservative on others? What did you learn from him when you interviewed the senator? Well, I've been covering him for decades One of the most consistent things that I can tell you about Joe Manchin He is the same guy who was a state senator in the 90s than he is today. And I will tell you, there are plenty of local Democrats that are out there that are the same as Joe Manchin. They have a buffet of issues that tend to be very rooted and grounded in the areas that they're from, and they reflect that with their votes. You see those kinds of Democrats

in state legislative bodies, or state Senate, state House, some governors, where they more have the freedom to be reflective of the area they represent. But when it comes to federal office, whether it's Congress or Senate, those kinds of candidates traditionally lose these races to the more progressive candidates in primaries because most of them, many of our primaries are closed. So only Democrats can

vote in those primaries. And the most excited Democrats and or Republicans are always in a primary are always to the left of their party. What do we do with this, Selena? How do we try and narrow the gap, improve the understanding, not find agreement, gap, improve the understanding, not find agreement, but at least find some common ground, some more trust. Turn off social media. I saw it everywhere. Common ground, helping each other out, not carding someone for their political party before you had a conversation with them.

That happens everywhere in this country It just doesn't happen in in Yeah on cable news and and on social media those both of them were designed to divide us and If you look at a cable news rating, you know an average cable news show Gets anywhere from one to three million people watching it. Well, there's a whole heck of a lot more other people out there.

The majority is not what you see on television. The majority is not what you see on Twitter. And I think those ratings speak to that. Do you think most of that majority are good people? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I was at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. It was right before Sturgis.

So there was a lot of people on motorcycles. Could you just tell us what Sturgis is? Sturgis is an annual rally that's held in Sturgis, South Dakota. Usually tracks about a half a million bikers for the week long that it goes. And it's like fun and it's festive, sometimes edgy, sometimes alcohol fueled. But it is a very happy place. And so I'm in Mount Rushmore and I'm by myself. So I'm trying to take a selfie, which is something I never do. And all of a sudden I'm surrounded by about 30 bikers. And they said, girl, you cannot have been in the picture by yourself at Mount Rushmore.

They all stood around me and hugged me. And then one of the guys stepped out and took a photo. And that to me is very reflective of the spirit of the American people. When you get out there, it is energizing. It is wonderful. I mean, that doesn't mean there's not sadness or despair or problems. However, that American spirit of wanting to be part of something bigger than themselves is evident in everything that you say. On your travels, do you see people with different perspectives actually physically getting together?

Because that is something I wonder about, whether many people's pulling back to a screen is a big part of the problem and that actual in-person gatherings be it at church or fairs or whatever is part of what helps keep us glued. Yeah, where was I? Somewhere outside of St. Louis and I had gotten gas and I saw this big family barbecue, big family picnic. The kids were playing like dodgeball and the adults were having beers and one was cooking and so I went over and just started talking to them and they all introduced themselves and and the one guy said yeah this this is my brother-in-law he's like our our token conservative, but we still love him. And they were like laughing,

and then they went on to something else. So I don't think, he seemed to be alive and healthy, and I think he's going to be fine. I think the family still loves him. And I've seen examples of that. I saw that a group of older gentlemen talking in Gettysburg, three of them voted for Biden, two of them voted for Trump.

They meet every morning for coffee. So I think we're fine. Political journalist, Selena Zito, speaking with us in 2021. You can read her reports in the Washington Examiner and also at selZito.com. You spell Salina with an A. It's S-A-L-E-N-A. By the way, in that interview, you may have noticed that Salina says she loves diner food. Ashley, what about you?

Definitely for breakfast. Yup. Love pancakes, French toast, a good omelette and maybe a BLT for lunch. I love fried eggs in diners for breakfast and if they do a home-baked pie, I'm all in. That's what we cooked up for you this week. Thanks for joining us on Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Miltite. I'm Richard Davies. Thanks for listening.