Sunday Bloody Sunday
Donald Trump warns of a bloodbath if he loses the presidential election next Fall ... also Ohio Republicans hated Donald Trump before they loved him.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.
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When Is A Bloodbath Not A Bloodbath?
On Sunday, at a political rally in Ohio, Donald Trump said, “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”
Predictably, these comments created a firestorm on social media, as Democrats and liberals pointed to Trump’s words as yet another example of his dangerous and violent rhetoric.
But Trump’s supporters quickly cried foul, claiming that Trump’s statement was taken out of context — and he was referring to the impact on the auto industry if he loses the election next Fall.
Here are his full remarks:
“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 … 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 gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars. They’re building massive factories.”
And here is the full clip.
It’s not completely clear what Trump was referring to when he talked about a bloodbath. Maybe he was talking about the auto industry; maybe he was making a discursive pronouncement about what would happen if he loses next Fall, or maybe he was spouting whatever idea popped into his head at that given moment. But he did say, “If I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath.”
The guy who incited a riot on January 6, regularly uses apocalyptic and violent rhetoric and issues dire warnings about what will happen if he is not elected, does not get the benefit of the doubt—not now, not ever.
Indeed, in the same speech, Trump said that if he loses, “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”
The preponderance of evidence — combined with Trump’s incoherent, stream of consciousness rantings — makes the accusation that he is warning of a “bloodbath” if not elected entirely legitimate.
For the record, Trump supporters whining that his words are being taken out of context and that the media has not precisely interpreted them reminds me of that old French expression “Donnez-moi, a f***ing break.” Talking about “Donald Trump and precision” and “Donald Trump and context” is like talking about “Donald Trump and stable genius.”
Not surprisingly, Trump’s bloodbath comment was only one of several controversial and inappropriate statements that he uttered on Sunday. For example, he said of migrants crossing the border into the United States, “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases,” he said. “They’re not people, in my opinion.” Later in his remarks, he called them “animals.”
He also called Joe Biden a “stupid president” and repeatedly referred to him as a “dumb son of a bitch.” He called California Governor Gavin Newsom “Gavin New-scum” and made fun of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s weight.
Perhaps the worst part is that the rally began with the signing of the national anthem by those arrested and prosecuted for storming the Capitol on January 6 … though at the event, they were referred to as the ”horribly and unfairly treated January 6 hostages" (it’s genuinely hilarious that even the PA announcer at Trump events uses his child-like language — “horribly and unfairly”).
Again, a man who treats insurrectionists as heroes and who has pledged to pardon them if he is elected president is assumed guilty until proven innocent.
There is, however, a larger lesson to draw from Trump’s Ohio speech — he can’t help himself. He is so addled, so mentally unwell, and so incapable of abiding by basic social and political norms that he will keep making terrible statements like the ones on Sunday.
Eventually, voters will notice.
It’s still March, and most Americans are not paying attention to the presidential election, but at some point, Trump’s constant, apocalyptic warnings of violence, his racist, degrading description of migrants, his playground insults, and his general unpleasantness will register with the electorate. Maybe they won’t care, and it won’t matter, but no candidate — even Trump — can outrun a record as toxic as his.
The Moral Degradation of the GOP, Pt. 276,843
This photo in the New York Times article on Trump’s speech made me chuckle.
Among those pictured are Rep. Jim Jordan and Ohio Senator JD Vance. In the middle is GOP Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who is locked in a tight race to take on Democratic incumbent senator Sherrod Brown.
Here’s some back story on Moreno.
A one-time Trump critic, Moreno, a wealthy Cleveland businessman, supported Marco Rubio for president in the 2016 Republican primary, and once tweeted that listening to Trump was “like watching a car accident that makes you sick, but you can stop looking.” In 2021, NBC News reported on an email exchange around the time of Trump’s first presidential run in which Moreno referred to Trump as a “lunatic” and a “maniac.”
But on Saturday, Moreno, who Trump has endorsed, sang a different tune.
Moreno praised Trump as a “great American” and railed against those in his party who have been critical of the former president, who this week became his party’s presumptive nominee for a third straight election.
“I am so sick and tired of Republicans that say, ‘I support President Trump’s policies but I don’t like the man,’” he said as he joined Trump on stage.
It’s quite fitting that he is standing next to Vance, who, before he entered politics, said this about Trump in 2016, “I’m a Never Trump guy,“ and “I never liked him.” That same year, he tweeted about Trump, “My god, what an idiot.” In a private email exchange, he once wrote, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and may even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
Indeed, it seems that half the Republicans who Trump endorses have a track record of disparaging him.
Now, Vance and Moreno are Trump’s biggest fans because integrity, ethics, and morality are attributes that Republican politicians quickly cast aside if they have a chance to win elected office. They cheer Trump publicly, while undoubtedly, in private, they joke about how awful he is.
It reminds me of this story from McKay Coppins's Atlantic article about Mitt Romney.
One afternoon in March 2019, Trump paid a visit to the Senate Republicans’ weekly caucus lunch. He was in a buoyant mood—two days earlier, the Justice Department had announced that the much-anticipated report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller failed to establish collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. As Romney later wrote in his journal, the president was met with a standing ovation fit for a conquering hero, and then launched into some rambling remarks. He talked about the so-called Russia hoax and relitigated the recent midterm elections and swung wildly from one tangent to another. He declared, somewhat implausibly, that the GOP would soon become “the party of health care.” The senators were respectful and attentive.
As soon as Trump left, Romney recalled, the Republican caucus burst into laughter.
Republicans like to posture as tough guys, but they lack both the courage of their convictions (Romney is an obvious and laudable exception) and the resoluteness to stand up to a bully like Trump. They are basically just a bunch of wimps. That they are willing to subject the country to Trump’s sociopathy because they aspire to the short-term goal of elected office is a stain that will never wash off.
What’s Going On
Speaking of Moreno, he’s got a bit of a zipper problem.
Donald Trump couldn’t put together a bond for his $454 million civil fraud penalty, which likely means … everything must go!
Trump’s cash crunch is only getting worse — and he’s running a major risk of being dramatically outspent by President Biden.
Hadley Freeman has a wise take on Jonathan Glazer’s controversial Oscars speech.
Musical Interlude
Biden's best argument against Trump isn't that he makes stupid comments (granted the fact that the media harps on every Biden gaffe, but does not on Trump is sadly a fact) or that he's a bigot, a rapist, a racist, a moral degenerate...I could go on. It's that Trump is:
1. Incompetent. He is terrible at picking good people, he's awful at understanding his job, and has no idea how to work with Congress or conduct foreign policy.
and
2. His policies suck: tariffs will make inflation worse and the US poorer, cutting off immigration will ALSO make inflation worse (and America poorer), and ending the American alliance network will make America unsafe. His fiscal malpractice will require either taxes on the middle class in the future, or cuts to Social Security and Medicare in the future. He wants to end Obamacare which will also hurt us fiscally
There is also this:
3. Trump is morally unfit to lead. But the US has had plenty of morally unfit presidents. Bill Clinton was morally unfit. You could argue LBJ, JFK, Reagan and others were morally unfit. This is not a compelling argument.
The best argument for Democracy is not rights, it's that its just a better system to run a government than an autocracy. Trump's appeal right now is that he's stronger: the best antidote is to point out that, no, he isn't and, yes, his policies suck.