Former President Donald Trump is under fire for saying at a rally in Ohio this weekend that “if I don't get elected, it's gonna be a bloodbath.” On Monday, the Biden campaign seized on that statement and released an ad claiming that Trump was advocating violence if he is not elected. Biden campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said, “the context is clear: their candidate [Donald Trump] has spent every moment since his first campaign encouraging and excusing political violence. Repeatedly. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature of Donald Trump’s extremism. We take Trump at his word — and voters will too.”
If you listen to his entire speech, it is obvious that the former President was making the point that if he is not elected and the United States allows China to import cars through Mexico untaxed, the United States automobiles industry will be devastated. He said, "China now is building a couple of massive plants where they’re going to build the cars in Mexico, and they think they are going to sell those cars into the United States with no tax at the border. Let me tell you something to China… 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 gonna be a bloodbath for the whole -- that's gonna be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country."
Could Trump have expressed himself better, bringing less controversy? Yes, but “bloodbath” is a common term, especially in American politics. Over the last few years, it has been used by political pundits such as, Rachel Maddow, Ali Vitali, Mike Brezinski, Van Jones, Jake Tapper, Joe Scarborough, Don Lemon, Joy Reid, Whoopi Goldberg. Were all those people advocating violence or were they just using the term metaphorically, like Donald Trump obviously was. But the people on the left never allow the truth to get in the way of their preconceived narratives.
Ironically, He Xiaopeng, the CEO of the Chinese auto company XPeng Motors agrees with Trump and predicts a "bloodbath" against America's auto industry with the help of cheap China-made electric vehicles. Xiaopeng wrote in the employee memo. “This year also marks the beginning of a fierce competition that may end in a ‘bloodbath’ (or as I prefer to call it, the brutal ‘knockout round’) among Chinese auto makers. XPeng has engaged in this cutthroat competition right from the outset, thus accumulating considerable experience. Our guts, grit and perseverance, I firmly believe, will lead us to victory.”
American automobile executives agree with Donald Trump's belief that China is trying to annihilate American auto manufacturing. In January, Elon Musk said, “The Chinese car companies are the most competitive car companies in the world … so, I think they will have significant success outside of China depending on what kind of tariffs or trade barriers are established. Frankly, I think, if there are not trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other companies in the world.”
In February, the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) issued a report gravely concerned if Joe Biden allows China to export cheap EVs into the U.S. market. The AAM report stated, “The introduction of cheap Chinese autos — which are so inexpensive because they are backed with the power and funding of the Chinese government — to the American market could end up being an extinction-level event for the U.S. auto sector, whose centrality in the national economy is unimpeachable.” You would think that Joe Biden would be more concerned about the looming threat of China destroying one of our major industries, than some inartful words of his political opponent. Joe Biden and the Democrats are pretending to be concerned with violent political rhetoric of Donald Trump, when they have been the ones who continually spout violent language.
In 2018, Maxine Waters said, “If you see anybody from that [Trump’s] Cabinet…, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere."
In 2020, Kamala Harris sounded like a cheerleader for the BLM riots that killed over 30 innocent people and injured thousands of others when she said, “They’re not going to stop and everyone beware, because they’re not going to stop... Everyone should take note of that on both levels. They’re not going to let up and they should not and we should not."
President Barack Obama once told his fellow Democrats, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”, and to “argue with neighbors, get in their face.”
During the 2020 Presidential campaign, Joe Biden said, he wanted to, “take Trump behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”
Hilary Clinton once advocated for violence against Republics and when she said, “You cannot be civil with a party that wants to destroy what you stand for.”
Former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi encouraged riots when she said, “I just don’t even know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country. And maybe there will be, when people realize that this is a policy that they defend.” And later, she told her voters, you “must be ready to throw a punch.”
Chuck Schumer threatened Supreme Court Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch when he told them after a vote on abortion, “You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you.”
Senator Corey Booker encouraged fellow Democrats to “go to the Hill today. Get up and, please, get up in the face of some congresspeople.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez encouraged her constituency to “occupy every airport, occupy every border, every ICE office.”
During the BLM and Antifa riots, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley advocated violence when she said, there “needs to be unrest in the streets.”
And last Thursday, after the Tennessee General Assembly passed a pro-law enforcement bill, Tennessee State Senator Charlane Oliver (D-Nashville) advocated for violence when she said, “So yeah, we’re gonna fight. Dr. King said the riots are the language of the unheard. You ain’t seen nothing yet… Gloves off. Like, we’re gonna fight like hell.” No outrage by anyone on the left about a politician telling her constituents to riot because they don’t like a piece of legislation.
The “bloodbath” is just another example of the Democrats twisting Donald Trump’s words to paint him as unhinged. This is no different than the way they continually misrepresented Donald Trump’s words after the tragedy in Charlottesville in 2017. Joe Biden, and many politicians and journalist on the left have repeatedly claimed that Donald Trump called the white supremacists in Charlottesville, “very fine people”, twisting Trump’s words and the truth to fit their narrative.
At the press conference after the tragedy, Trump said, “And you had people -- and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people. But you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets, and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group." Trump “condemned totally” the white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and called the regular protestors exercising the Constitutional rights “very fine people”.
Trump went onto say about Charlottesville, “Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” But yet, the media still drives the narrative that Trump refuses to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis when he has done it on record dozens of times.
On Sunday, Nancy Pelosi weighed in on Trump’s “bloodbath” controversy when she told CNN’s Dana Bash, “But we have, we just have to win this election because he’s even predicting a bloodbath. What does that mean? He’s going to exact a bloodbath? There’s something wrong here… how much more do they have to see from him to understand that this isn’t what our country is about? Praising Hitler praising the Russians — honestly, I didn’t condemn our soldiers for losing or dying in war or being captured in war.” Everything that she accused Donald Trump of saying is provably false, but yet the so-called journalist lets her make false statements without challenging her.
Aren’t we all tired of the lies, the misrepresentations, the out-of-context quotes? If you really think about it, those things are the biggest existential threats to America. In the end, average everyday Americans are not as different as we think we are. The problem is that we are being fed two completely different sets of information and narratives which drive us to opposite sides of the political spectrum. Social media and the internet make our individual echo chambers bigger and more isolated. They make it much harder for everyday Americans to get along and unite.
If everyone was given the truth, the actual facts of the events in question, most Americans would end up on the same page, on the same side, but that would be disastrous for our politicians and media. They depend on our division. But the divisions in our country will lead us to our ultimate demise. No one in power cares about the truth anymore, no one cares about unity anymore. Media’s profits are driven by our division, and the politicians entrench their power through our divisions. So, the truth must be sacrificed. The lies of the politicians and the media are driving a wedge through our country. And as our politicians and media are arguing over the meaning and context of the word “bloodbath”, China is at our doorstep, poised to strike, and when they do, we will be too divided to fight back effectively.
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J Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.