Trump defends declaration in speech predicting ‘bloodbath for country’

Former President Donald Trump sought Monday to defend his declaration over the weekend that the country would face a “bloodbath” if he lost in November, saying that he had been referring only to the auto industry.

“The Fake News Media, and their Democrat Partners in the destruction of our Nation, pretended to be shocked at my use of the word BLOODBATH, even though they fully understood that I was simply referring to imports allowed by Crooked Joe Biden, which are killing the automobile industry,” he wrote on his social media platform.

He made the remarks Saturday in Ohio in a speech delivered on behalf of Bernie Moreno, whom he has endorsed in Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary.

After vowing to impose tariffs on cars manufactured outside the United States, he then said: “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.”

In the same speech, Trump called some migrants “animals” and “not people, in my opinion”; described people convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as “hostages”; and suggested that American democracy would end if he lost.

“I don’t think you’re going to have another election or certainly not an election that’s meaningful,” he said.

Trump has embraced violent messaging since he first ran for president, at one point telling his supporters that he would pay their legal expenses if they attacked a protester at one of his rallies.

In his third presidential run, he has become more explicit.

He urged his supporters to “go after” the attorney general of New York, whose office filed a lawsuit against him for fraud. In January, he warned of “bedlam in this country” if the legal cases against him hurt him electorally.

Trump and his supporters objected to blowback over his latest remarks, saying they had been taken out of context by those who ignored his references to imports harming the auto industry and decried the comments as a direct call for violence.

President Joe Biden’s campaign responded to that objection with a video montage that included the “bloodbath” comment alongside footage of Trump saying there were “very fine people on both sides” of the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”; and pledging to pardon Jan. 6 defendants.

“MAGA wanted context, so we gave them context,” a Biden spokesperson, Parker Butler, wrote on social media Monday.