The issue is, and has always been, caused by a serious problem in the reddit's admins have in being perceived as being unable to enforce the rules fairly.

From time to time communities that are overall "okay" get deeply invested in an issue and "drama" is spawned. Sometimes rules are broken. When particular subs visibly break rules and the rules are not enforced their opponents feel license to also break rules. Both sides of these disputes could name a dozen or times that the other side broke the rules. They have mountains of evidence of this, and don't trust the admins as a result.

Because of that, and the explicitly political nature of r/the_donald, none of the admins have felt they could enforce those rules. Into that toxic hellbroth of a situation /r/pizzagate repeatedly had dox-drops containing actual child pornography. Visibly breaking like the only true real rules reddit has, the admins took the only option they had, and ware demonized for it.

Largely because all moderator actions had become so politicized, and after reviewing reported content that I suspect may have been genuinely traumatizing to review he made a mistake.