Media takes Donald Trump's words out of context. The bloodbath hoax explained.

 

Donald Trump at the Dayton Ohio rally. Newsweek/Getty.

The Trump campaign and Republicans are blasting the media after they falsely claimed that America would have a bloodbath if he didn't win in 2024. Newsweek. Trump was making the comments at a rally in Ohio. In context, Trump was referring to the auto industry. Trump said that he was going to put an 100% tariff on foreign cars but said if he didn't win it would be a bloodbath for the country, and then continued to talk about cars. But media headlines have removed that context. Republicans, including Senator J.D. Vance who was at the rally, have blasted the reports. 

We are witnessing the invention of the "bloodbath" hoax in real-time

Unfortunately for them, we have 𝕏

Media narrative: Full context: pic.twitter.com/jaYDvtGomn

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 17, 2024

If you can't or won't watch the above video, here is the entire quote in context:

 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 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 gonna be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it. But they're not going to sell those cars. They're building massive factories."

My Comment:

This is not the first time the media has completely lied about what Donald Trump has said. After all, Joe Biden based his whole campaign on the Charlottesville hoax, aka the "fine people" hoax. In that case they deliberately lied saying that Trump had called White Nationalists "fine people" when in fact he was condemning them and pointing out there were good people on both sides of the issue of confederate statues controversy (which is dramatically more credit then I would give the iconoclasts that destroy artwork). 

The difference now is this got debunked in real time on X and other social media. There isn't a post pushing the hoax on X right now that doesn't have dozens of comments condemning the articles put out by the media and showing the actual context. X has also added community notes to many of these articles, providing much needed context. And Elon Musk himself has checked in on the controversy. 

This headline is deceptive, as he was referring to the auto industry. Shame on NBC.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2024

It's also clear that bloodbath is a pretty common term. Indeed, there are a lot of videos out there showing how often the media uses the term. It's not a serious term, in none of those cases was the media saying that there was actual violence, just like Trump obviously wasn't talking about real violence in his speech in Ohio. 

 

The media is so offended by the term “Bloodbath” that they use it all the time.

pic.twitter.com/nKkE1TR9HA

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 17, 2024

So why would the media lie like this when it's so easily debunked? Well it's because they know that they won't get challenged about it outside of social media. There are still millions of people that get their news from broadcast and network news and those folks will have no idea that this is an obvious lie. They won't ever get the context to the speech and they will have no idea of the truth. 

That alone explains why Trump was so hated despite the fact that he was a pretty decent president. You would never know it if you only got your news from the media. And they lie so blatantly but how are people supposed to know without an X account, or an account on another alternate social media site? 

Of course the media isn't the only villain here, the Biden campaign is also doubling down on this lie. They put out there own statement condemning Trump's misattributed words and they have absolutely no shame in doing it. Why would they? Their entire 2020 campaign was based on the "fine people" hoax so why not try it again in 2024? 

If there is any good news about this is that at least people who are on social media are able to see through this nonsense. It's possible that it will percolate out beyond that, which is a huge change from 2020 when it was pretty much impossible to see anything critical of the Biden administration percolate out to the greater population.