Terry H. Schwadron
March 20, 2024
Donald Trump’s blunt warning of a “bloodbath” if he is not elected president, particularly when he tied the rally remark over the weekend to renewed vows to pardon Jan. 5 arrestees for violence as “hostages” has again cemented not only the crudeness of our elections but has highlighted what is at stake.
The remark came at a Trump rally in Ohio to boost the chances of his selected candidate for Senate, Bernie Moreno. It was somewhat garbled, incomplete thought mixed in with election denial, boasting, and criticism of Joe Biden for promoting electric cars. It ended with a thought that a bloodbath “is just going to be the least of it.”
We probably shouldn’t take every campaign blurb seriously, but this one feels like one of those moments that will not die out. Despite Trump’s denials, it came across as a believable threat or promise should he lose, and follows the pattern of such remarks over years. We’ve seen before what happens when Trump warns militia groups to stand back and stand by or a hundred other euphemisms. Individual Trump followers take it as a command to mobilize, and threats against critics or physical violence can follow.
In the current environment, it took only minutes for opponents in both parties to seize on the dire threat posed by a Trump presidency as well as an insensitivity to actual hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, for example.
At the minimum, we should be able to believe what Trump says he intends to do. As voters, we want our candidates to support the government they want to run, not to undercut the very elections that hires them for the job. So for the millionth time, one wonders what is going on in Trump’s mind.
Who’s Telling What Story?
Then there is the story about what gets said. In some ways, the ripples of these kind of remarks are more significant than the original utterance, which we have learned over and over may be just blurted out for effect, to rouse a crowd.
Breitbart News called the attention to “bloodbath” a hoax, Fox News skipped it altogether to focus on remarks about Moreno, Fox’s The Five ridiculed the incident, and Trump’s own team was busily trying to sway listeners that Trump was talking about a bloodbath facing the auto industry without the 100% tariffs he would impose on foreign car sales. So, even when Trump issues a threat, it comes with the attempt to refit it with a velvet glove.
Trump would argue that his opponents are using the Justice Department and state prosecutors to accomplish its threats by filing charges for crimes which may never get heard before the election because Trump lawyers are engaged in widespread delay tactics.
It’s not just that Trump and Biden are two old men or that this is a tired rematch that makes this election feel so dated and so misfocused. It is that they see wholly different sets of national interests — and the country insists on splitting its votes rather evenly, allowing just seven or eight states to settle on a leader because of the mechanics of the Electoral College totals.
It’s that it is possible to invite, encourage, coordinate violent response for an election loss, or to guarantee total government gridlock almost regardless of the outcome.
Why isn’t Trump talking about what to do about high prices and international cooperation? Because fear of crime, of immigrants, or political correctness, environmental regulation and vilification of teachers are so much more acceptable as objects for building hate. And because those are issues that Biden wants to discuss rather than support for two wars and a promised substitution of autocracy for our democratic traditions.
Stoking Fear and Threats
Is Trump already inviting another Jan. 6? It sure sounds like it, even if this time a Republican majority House may be able to choose a president if the results are too close. Is Trump inviting violence in his behalf? Again, it sure sounds like it, even as he promises to unleash federal troops in our streets — following declarations of military emergency.
Is Trump advocating that others join him in harassing witnesses, prosecutors, judges, and court staff who have been told by citizen grand juries that he must stand trial. You bet. Is Trump defending those who have committed violence in his name? Yes, even offering to underwrite defense costs and to pardon their crimes.
Dan Froomkin at PressWatch.com complains repeatedly that pursuit of both fairness and horse-race reporting, political journalism is failing to stress that it is our democracy and our individual rights that are at issue in this election. In his own way, Froomkin advocates listening differently and asking far different questions of these two candidates.
It feels much too facile just to complain about the price of eggs or who’s marginally ahead in national polls months before an election and not to engage with the kind of changes each candidate wants to bring to our culture, our legal life, and our everyday world. Maybe Trump should be more focused on paying his court judgments than on threats lofted into the air.
In some ways, we’ve already seen that an institutional bloodbath is underway.
##
TerryHSchwadron 