3 Smart Takes on Trump's "Bloodbath" Comment and Context
When does "bloodbath" not mean bloodbath? And who is owed the benefit of the doubt?
Hey all. Parker here.
At a rally over the weekend, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said the following (bolded emphasis mine):
China now is building a couple of massive plants where they’re going to build the cars in Mexico and think, they think, that they’re going to sell those cars into the United States with no tax at the border. Let me tell you something to China, if you’re listening President Xi, and you and I are friends, but he understands the way I deal. Those big monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now, and you think you’re going to get that, you’re going to not hire Americans, and you’re going to sell the cars to us? No. We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars. If I get elected. Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath, for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars.
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I wrote a bit about this in Monday’s newsletter. But in the days since, there’s been quite a bit of discussion about context and understanding what Trump “really meant.” So, in the spirit of trying to understand, I wanted to share three insightful takes on the controversy.
“Trump, a ‘Bloodbath’, and the ‘Banality of Crazy’” (Zeteo, Mehdi Hasan, 3/18/23)
[A]t a campaign rally in Ohio on Saturday, Trump warned there would be a “bloodbath” if he’s not put back in the White House this November. The Trump campaign, and their online outriders, have since insisted that the former president was referring to a “bloodbath” in the auto industry if Biden is re-elected. Yes, he did mention Chinese car imports but, hold on, he also said “that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s gonna be a bloodbath for the country.”
Trump supporters online have continued to scream ‘but the context!’ since Saturday — and some liberal pundits have agreed with them. Okay, let’s talk context. Why give the benefit of the doubt to a man who has repeatedly warned of violence if he loses an election or a court case and who — lest we forget! — incited an armed attack on the United States government? Why give the benefit of the doubt to a man who, at that very same rally on Saturday, called migrants “animals,” referred to the January 6th insurrectionists as “hostages,” and even saluted them? In recent months, Trump has repeatedly vowed to pardon and free those convicted of crimes on January 6th, 2021.
That’s the context.
“Context collapse” (Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Allsop, 3/18/24)
The reason this debate has cycled on for so long is because there isn’t a satisfying answer: giving our audiences more direct exposure to Trump comes with legitimate benefits and risks, as does filtering that exposure; one could reasonably fear, meanwhile, that both scenarios might redound to Trump’s advantage in different ways. The debate will surely continue. But it strikes me that—now as always—journalists have certain unavoidable responsibilities in how we frame the story of Trump’s language, responsibilities that even greater exposure to his words cannot mitigate. These come back to the essential element of the “bloodbath” controversy: context.
Ultimately, journalists cannot—and probably should not—make voters feel a certain way about Trump, or even make them pay attention. But we can make sure that we are presenting the full truth of his remarks to those who are. This could involve broadcasting more of his words, but it doesn’t have to—to my ear, at least, airing his whole Ohio speech wouldn’t have cleared up precisely what he meant by “bloodbath,” because his words during that section were rambling and ambiguous (even if my sense is, on balance, that he was using the word in an economic sense). Broadcasting the whole speech would have exposed viewers to all the other things Trump did and said, not least saluting the January 6 insurrectionists. But news coverage summarizing the speech did that, too; at least, some of it did.
“Trump's 'bloodbath' threat — and campaign coverage that doesn't work” (American Crisis, Margaret Sullivan, 3/19/24)
Trump has a particular ability to say outrageous things that — because of his free-form (often unhinged) speaking style — can be taken in all kinds of ways. It’s pointless to debate precisely what he meant in a particular phrase or at a particular rally.
Report it? Certainly. As Hawaii senator Brian Schatz aptly put it, “Headline writers: Don’t outsmart yourselves. Just do ‘Trump Promises Bloodbath if He Doesn’t Win Election.’” That is simply true, and it’s inarguable. Separately, Schatz posted, “Promising a bloodbath is disqualifying. He needs to lose.”
A lot of things should have disqualified Trump by now. And he keeps doing more of them — apparently with impunity, at least from his die-hard followers. He also, at that Dayton rally, saluted while playing an alternative national anthem, with a backdrop featuring the Jan. 6 insurrectionists whom he has said he’ll pardon immediately if elected. Talk about disqualifying.
This is my take, and my boldface type: The legitimate media needs to figure out how to get across clearly to the voting public — the ones that matter in the handful of swing states that will decide the election — the consequences of electing Trump again.
I don’t think that is happening right now. The mainstream press is giving us far too much horserace coverage; far too much emphasis on meaningless national polls; far too much repetition about President Biden’s age and gaffes; and a whole lot of false equivalency created between these two wildly different candidates. And yes, far too much pointless debate about how seriously to take Trump’s individual utterances.
Over at
, a newsletter where I write about long-form journalism from time to time, I had the opportunity to interview Rolling Stone writer Miles Klee about journalism and his career. If you have a chance, check it out:That’s it for me today. I’ll be back tomorrow with another edition of The Present Age.
Parker
Timothy Snyder also had a good piece about this. He's got a point (out of three) similar to Medhi Hasan's where he mentions the saluting the insurrectionists and Trump's general love of violence and glorifying it. He goes a little deeper, too.
But all of that aside, the second I read the full quote on Sunday and saw the "context!" arguments, I wondered if they were serious since Trump is well-known to change topics in the middle of a sentence, with no warning. Why would this be any different?
It’s been nine years since Trump came down the escalator and there are STILL highly paid people who cover national politics who go to bed worrying that they haven’t given Donald Trump enough of a chance to explain what he’s all about.
And they wake up the next morning terrified that today is the day he’ll pull the mask off and reveal that he’s actually a smart, well-read guy who digs deep into the data, consults with a wide variety of experts and spends a lot of time in deep contemplation before issuing a policy statement.