Butler by Salena Zito

“Salena Zito…. She understands you people and me better than we do.” — President Donald J. Trump From the acclaimed journalist standing only a few feet away from the stage when the gunshots began is this gripping first-hand account of the near assassination of Donald Trump – and the inside story of Trump’s heartland-fueled victory. That day in Butler, had the wind gusted less, had Trump’s head turned in a slightly different direction, or had the adrenaline-fueled heart of the shooter beat slower, America would have been plunged into chaos, possibly even civil war. As a local reporter with deep ties to the area, Salena Zito had been invited by the president to interview him at the Butler Farm Show Grounds. She was standing only four feet away from the presidential podium when the bullets started to fly. A campaign staffer tackled her to the ground. Throughout it all, Salena never stopped reporting. She spoke by phone to Trump several times in the immediate aftermath and was granted access to community members, rally participants, family members and local law enforcement officials. “I rarely look away from the crowd,” Trump told her in one of several of those conversations. “Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?” Known for her on-the-ground reporting on populism and rural America, Salena zooms out to tell the fascinating story of the battle for America’s heartland and the issues that actually motivate voters. To understand how and why Trump won the 2024 election, you have to understand places like Butler. Big cities like Los Angeles, New York and D.C. don’t decide who wins election cycles, but people in places like Butler, Pennsylvania sure do. President Trump gave the author extraordinary access for this book, including to his top aides, to his running mate JD Vance, to billionaire supporter Elon Musk, and even his security detail. There are moments that define America. The late afternoon hours of July 13, 2024 was one of them. This book is a narrative of that fateful day, the people of the heartland and the untold story of how the president found his way back into the heart of the electorate.

“Despite the wealth of information at our fingertips in the information age, there is a glaring emptiness that plagues us in our storytelling. We remove nuance and replace it with sensationalism. We shun original stories because they stray too far from the pack. In the process, we miss the beauty, pain and magic, the simplicity and grace of simple, real-life stories about the ordinary lives of people who work the soil to make America possible. The result is that we lose touch with who we are as a nation.” In this collection of syndicated columns from 2023 and 2024, Zito pays attention to those stories. From talking with workers in small towns to covering the biggest political figures of our time, Zito paints a picture of where the country is after the midterm elections all the way through the final summer of presidential campaigning. She approaches each subject with compassion and curiosity and strives to ensure that no everyman is forgotten or ignored.

Journalist and author Salena Zito is celebrated for uncovering, as Rush Limbaugh explains, “an amazing national political realignment that was—and still is—completely invisible to the Wizards of Smart who inhabit our distant capital.” She finds America not through the media and Washington establishment but those she meets driving on the back roads from Pittsburgh to Cleveland. They are the misunderstood and forgotten men and women who elected President Donald Trump, and those unexpected voters who continue to shape our political landscape. In this collection of Zito’s syndicated columns from 2019, she provides a unique look at the cultural and political moments of today. Read about small-business struggles and hometown heroes, our cultural divide and communities coming together, to see where we could be headed in 2020.

A CNN political analyst and a Republican strategist reframe the discussion of the “Trump voter” to answer the question, What’s next? NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS • “Unlike most retellings of the 2016 election, The Great Revolt provides a cohesive, non-wild-eyed argument about where the Republican Party could be headed.”—The Atlantic Political experts were wrong about the 2016 election and they continue to blow it, predicting the coming demise of the president without pausing to consider the durability of the winds that swept him into office. Salena Zito and Brad Todd have traveled over 27,000 miles of country roads to interview more than three hundred Trump voters in ten swing counties. What emerges is a portrait of a group of citizens who span job descriptions, income brackets, education levels, and party allegiances, united by their desire to be part of a movement larger than themselves. They want to put pragmatism before ideology and localism before globalism, and demand the respect they deserve from Washington. The 2016 election signaled a realignment in American politics that will outlast any one president. Zito and Todd reframe the discussion of the “Trump voter” to answer the question, What’s next?