Clutch Your Pearls, This Isn’t The Last Trump ‘Bloodbath’ – The Federalist

You dont need to be a fan of Donald Trump to concede that this weekends meltdown over the word bloodbath was cynical and dishonest. And you dont have to be Nostradamus to predict that were going to be inundated with a string of similar fabricated meltdowns this cycle.

Its not just the obvious hackery or unseriousness from the media thats the problem. No one trusts journalists anymore, anyway. Rather, like in 2020, it is also surely the case that were not going to see anything approaching a genuine presidential contest or debate. Its going to be one insufferably stupid ginned-up controversy after the next. Were living in an idiocracy.

And these events go down basically the same way every time: Trump throws some off-the-cuff populist red meat to a crowd. Sometimes his comments are worth criticizing. Sometimes they are misconstrued. Sometimes they are hyperbole. Most of the time, theyre predictable campaign fodder.

But some mendacious Ruparian social-media type will dishonestly clip a quote, and that quote will go viral. The media, rather than keeping the mob honest, run with it because reporters are largely incurious or propagandists or both, and they know well that Trump-is-a-Nazis content sells. If the Russia-collusion hoax taught us anything, its that there is no repercussion for being wrong about Republicans.

Then pundits sit on media panels incredulously wow-ing the quote and pondering when the MAGA Sturmabteilung will finally mass at the Mason Dixon.

Trump says country faces bloodbath if Biden wins in November, reads the Politico headline, though numerous outlets framed the comment in the same way which is to say, so stratospherically out of context, it amounts to a lie.

The New York Times, as often is the case, is probably the worst offender: Trump says some migrants are not people and predicts a blood bath if he loses. placing the migrant comment right next to blood bath creates the impression that Trump was promising violence toward migrants.

Here is the full context of Trumps remarks:

Let me tell you something, to China, if youre listening, President Xi those big, monster car manufacturing plants that youre building in Mexico right now, and you think youre going to get that, youre going to not hire Americans and youre going to sell the cars to us?

No, were going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and youre not going to be able to sell those guys if I get elected. Now, if I dont get elected, its going to be a bloodbath for the whole Thats going to be the least of it. Its going to be a bloodbath for the country. Thatll be the least of it. But theyre not going to sell those cars, theyre building massive factories.

A friend of mine, all he does is build car manufacturing plants. Hes the biggest in the world, I mean honestly, I joke about it, he cant walk across the street in that way hes like Biden but for building a plant, he can do the greatest plants in the world, right? Thats all he cares about.

Though I dont much care for what Trump is saying, any good-faith reader can see theres nothing in his sprawling rhetoric that suggests a call for violence. Trump, in fact, is suggesting that Bidens policies will lead to bloodbaths, not that he will call for it. Watching the Sunday morning political shows, one might have been under the impression that Trump had threatened to march on Dupont Circle.

More specifically, Trump is talking about the automotive industry. He mentions cars before and after the bloodbath comment. Me, Im all for more affordable imported cars, and Im opposed to tariffs that hurt Americans more than help. But Trump is staking out a position that is well within the norm of American political rhetoric. It is a position that probably appeals to a majority of voters.

If Democrats had any kind of coherent message beyond blurting out Jan. 6 every few minutes, they would argue about trade with Trump rather than concocting nonexistent threats.

On ABC, Susan Glasser claimed that the media had inured to the extraordinary, remarkable, and very at times, un-American, and threatening things that the former President is saying.

OK, then. Google the word bloodbath in conjunction with political coverage, and you will likely find tens of thousands of instances. There is nothing extraordinary or remarkable about it. Politicians, including Biden, have used the phrase. The phrase often describes blowouts in sports and layoffs in corporate America as in, Look at all the layoffs in news media, its a bloodbath. Every publication that misled the public on Trumps bloodbath comments over the weekend has used it metaphorically tons of times.

Even when forced to concede that the comment may have been taken out of context, the Trump-obsessed will rationalize treating words differently to suit their purpose. Its a classic trait and technique of authoritarian demagogues, George Conway explained in a long thread. He catastrophizes everything to rile up his cultish supporters, and to bind them to him, and to make them willing to do his bidding.

Project much?

Politicians always catastrophize events. Modern Democrats, though, act like they are the last Jewish holdouts at Masada. Joe Biden gives angry prime-time speeches contending that one-party rule is the only way to preserve our liberties from the semi-fascists. The entirety of the Democrat Partys message is predicated on scaremongering about apocalypses and fascism and the dystopian Handmaids Tale. Everything, from tax cuts to internet deregulation to limits on abortion to porn being banned in schools, becomes an existential threat to democracy.

Meanwhile, here in reality, the American left continues to corrode the constitutional order and norms to save democracy. The self-destruction of the media is merely one of the ways.

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Clutch Your Pearls, This Isn't The Last Trump 'Bloodbath' - The Federalist