Why Trump rants echo familiar
So Donald Trump remains in the news and unfortunately, it doesn’t involve him going to prison for his various real or alleged crimes. There is the part where the alleged billionaire can’t rustle up the $454million (U.S.) fine in his civil fraud case, but that’s a fleeting pleasure.
No, Trump’s current controversy came after the ex-president delivered a speech to an estimated 1,000 people in Dayton, Ohio, on the weekend, in which he promised a bloodbath if he wasn’t re-elected.
What kind of bloodbath was the question. Trump and his supporters insist he was solely referring to the auto industry, and the impact of foreign-made cars on American manufacturing if he was not elected. Joe Biden’s campaign was not the only one who described it as yet another incitement to violence. Conservatives said that was misinformation. The argument is still going on.
How can we decide? First, let’s go to the tape. Here’s what Trump said.
“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 per cent 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’ll be the least of it.
“But they’re not going to sell those cars. They’re building massive factories.”
That was a relatively focused bit for Trump: he tends to wander, even off prepared remarks. Trump’s speeches tend to be long, in the style of many dictators whose narcissism is a black hole. He largely talks to and about himself, playing the greatest hits, speaking in a sort of MAGA code. But he gets boring, too. The Independent reported a chunk of the 1,000 in attendance in Ohio left early to beat the traffic or get a beer. So Trump spices up his speeches with ever more inflammatory language. Seems like the crowds demand it.
So did Trump mean bloodbath in terms of the auto industry, or in terms of organized political violence? Or both? Well, if you want to understand how Trump talks, just remember Don Cherry, near the end of his time on “Hockey Night in Canada.” For years, Cherry didn’t make sense if you actually wrote down what he said. He’d start one thought, then jump to another. But viewers understood, because generations in Canada had grown up listening to him on Saturday night, and we knew what he meant. Swedes. Pukes. Good Canadian boy. Veterans.
And, of course, immigrants. Cherry complained about immigrants for decades, and as the great Dave Hodge once told me, HNIC could have taped “Coach’s Corner” instead of airing it live, to protect Cherry and themselves. As Hodge put it, “Even after the monster had been created, there was the opportunity to build a cage.” But they never did.
That’s why Cherry’s tenure ended so abruptly. When he said “you people” you knew what he was talking about, if you knew Cherry.
Trump is like that. The argument over the use of “bloodbath” is a small part of a bigger picture, and neither that picture nor his comment is hard to parse. Trump was talking about the auto industry and his re-election and a bloodbath when he said, “(The auto industry) is gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country, (the auto industry)’ll be the least of it.”
He expanded the terms of what he was talking about in real time. Maybe you could argue that Trump was actually referring to the U.S. economy, or American democracy, or organized political violence in terms of lone wolves or small mobs or another attempt at insurrection, in the event of him losing another national election. Or maybe all three.
But his history of encouraging violence is clear, obvious and dangerous. In Ohio, Trump started the rally with a tribute to his supporters who are in prison for crimes committed while storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while trying to overturn the election. He called them “hostages” and “patriots” and played the anthem in their honour. It’s become a bit for him.
And as president, he wanted border officials to shoot migrants in the legs, wanted cops to rough up protesters, and told his defence secretary, Mark Esper, that he wanted to send troops into American cities. He wants to legalize police shooting suspected shoplifters. His use of apocalyptic and dehumanizing language — like in Ohio, when he referred to immigrants as animals, or “not people, in my opinion” — paints a vision of foreign nations sending criminals to America to poison the country, which is a favourite of autocrats everywhere. It’s designed to foment violence.
So if you listen to Trump’s speeches the way a MAGA type would, the way a Jan. 6 supporter would, what do you hear when he says, of the auto industry and his own re-election, “That’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country, that’ll be the least of it”? We don’t need to pretend he’s anything other than he is.
There’s just no reason to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt, and violence will likely accompany the coming American election either way, just like the last one. Maybe someone will put the monster in a cage, but there’s no guarantee of that, and until then Trump has reintroduced the idea of real violence into American politics, whatever he said this weekend. And all we can do is watch.