On Saturday, as those who pay attention doubtlessly know by now, former President Donald Trump told a campaign crowd in Ohio that, if he isn’t elected president again in November, there would be a “bloodbath.”
I mean, you probably didn’t hear it from Donald Trump, but you doubtlessly heard it from the establishment media and Democrats. (Assuming you can tell the two apart.)
And they can be trusted to bring you Trump’s remarks in full context, right?
For instance, take The New York Times, always unbiased in these matters (please note the dripping sarcasm): “Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses.”
Wow! That sounds bad! Unfortunately for the Times and its fellow travelers, as GOP Rep. Byron Donalds pointed out in a 61-second video posted to social media, it was all a lie.
As Donald’s video shows, first came the the parade of politicos who were decrying the “bloodbath” on Sunday-morning television. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker (or “speaker emerita,” to use the libs’ new favorite term for her) was among them, because of course she was.
Following that was a parade of headlines from various media sources. Besides the Times, my second-favorite had to be Reuters’: “Trump predicts the end of U.S. democracy if he loses 2024 election.” Again, sounds horrible!
As the guy from the famous viral clip said: “Hold up, wait a minute! Something ain’t right!” And it wasn’t. Listen to what Trump actually said.
🚨FAKE NEWS ALERT🚨
Yesterday, President Trump held a rally in OH. He spoke about how outsourcing the US auto industry would create an economic bloodbath.
Now media is deliberately twisting his words in an attempt to dupe the American people.
This “bloodbath” hoax is SHAMEFUL. pic.twitter.com/gqAJH3SOLD
— Byron Donalds (@ByronDonalds) March 17, 2024
Yes, Trump was talking about what would happen to jobs in the auto industry.
“Those big, monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now — and you think that … you’re not going to hire Americans and you’re going to sell the cars to us, no,” Trump said.
“We’re going to put a 100 percent 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.
“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.”
Does the “bloodbath” lie show Democrats will go to any length to win 2024?
And yet, the very same people and publications that hemmed and hawed over every word found on Hunter Biden’s computer that insinuated his father had full knowledge of the extent of his foreign business dealings immediately seized upon this speech as proof that Trump was promising bloodshed if he isn’t elected — despite the context being eminently clear to anyone that he was talking about metaphorical economic bloodbath, not anything literal.
The left will go to almost any length to win in 2024, and this is yet more proof.
To be fair to the Times, its report mentioned the context, albeit without the quote and as part of a larger narrative that Trump was running on a dark vision of America as a country: “With his general-election matchup against President Biden in clear view, Mr. Trump once more doubled down on the doomsday vision of the country that has animated his third presidential campaign and energized his base during the Republican primary,” the Gray Lady reported.
“The dark view resurfaced throughout his speech. While discussing the U.S. economy and its auto industry, Mr. Trump promised to place tariffs on cars manufactured abroad if he won in November. He added: ‘Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.’
“For nearly 90 minutes outside the Dayton International Airport in Vandalia, Ohio, Mr. Trump delivered a discursive speech, replete with attacks and caustic rhetoric. He noted several times that he was having difficulty reading the teleprompter.”
The current president started his campaign with the dark lie that he was running because the then-president had called the white supremacists at the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia rally which ended with a counter-protester dead “fine people.” He would go on to blame him for pretty much everything from a rise in anti-Semitism to COVID deaths to Kyle Rittenhouse.
But this wasn’t called a “doomsday vision” or anything like that. To hear outlets like the Times tell it, it was just God’s honest truth. And if Biden had problems reading off the teleprompter — and he does, and not infrequently — they’re not reported in the legacy media.
Trump, meanwhile, offers his assessment of the economy, the border and the job that Joe Biden has done and it’s suddenly a “doomsday vision” filled with “caustic rhetoric.”
And, of course, talk of “bloodbaths” — absent all context. That’s why these lies are unforced errors that always backfire.
It’s all more proof that if the establishment media outlets didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.
