Trump Defends His Warning of a 'Blood Bath for the Country' – The New York Times
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He said he had been referring only to the auto industry.
Former President Donald J. Trump on Monday sought to defend his declaration over the weekend that the country would face a “blood bath” 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 in Ohio on Saturday, 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 blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”
In the same speech, Mr. Trump called some migrants “animals” and “not people, in my opinion”; described people convicted in connection with the Jan. 6 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.
Mr. 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. He escalated his rhetoric after he lost in 2020, encouraging his supporters who ended up storming the Capitol. He still describes them as persecuted patriots.
Now in his third presidential run, he has become more explicit.
He said in September that shoplifters should be shot and that Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed. 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.
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