A Bloodbath

 While speaking about the potential loss of U.S. auto manufacturing jobs to foreign countries, former President Donald Trump said if he isn’t elected, “it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”

President Joe Biden’s campaign quickly accused Trump of promoting “political violence.” The Trump campaign said Trump was clearly using the term in the context of an economic bloodbath.

“If you actually watch and listen to the section, he was talking about the auto industry and tariffs, Biden’s policies will create an economic bloodbath for the auto industry and autoworkers.”

That explanation seems the most plausible, given the context of Trump’s comments.

Speaking at a rally on the grounds of the Dayton International Airport in Ohio, Trump said that over the last three decades, Mexico has siphoned off U.S. auto manufacturing jobs, and he accused China of building car manufacturing plants in Mexico that will cost U.S. autoworkers their jobs.

Here is the EXACT quote made by Trump: "China now is building a couple of massive plants where they’re going to build the cars in Mexico and think, they think, that they’re going to sell those cars into the United States with no tax at the border. Let me tell you something to China, 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% 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 going to 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."

On Truth Social on March 18, Trump wrote that his words were being purposely taken out of context.

“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,” Trump wrote, promising that if elected U.S. auto manufacturing “WILL THRIVE LIKE NEVER BEFORE.”