Trump’s calls for blood: when fact checkers confuse substance and precision

Perhaps the mostly widely criticized statement that Vice President Kamala Harris made Tuesday evening related to Trump’s infamous “bloodbath” comment five months ago. Here’s the Washington Post on 18 May 2024: Trump predicts ‘bloodbath’ if he isn’t elected.

Trump’s comment came in a wild ramble about automobile imports but he did pledge a “bloodbath.” Miriam Webster defines bloodbath as “a notably fierce, violent, or destructive contest or struggle” or “a major economic disaster.”

Which do you think he meant with this statement?

“If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole country.”
Donald Trump, 18 May 2024

It was a non-sequitur, unlinked to his word scramble about automobile imports. It’s not the first nor the last time he has talked about blood.

This weekend in Wisconsin Trump flashed back to January 6, 2021, with this violent rhetoric:

Every citizen who’s sick and tired of the parasitic political class in Washington that sucks our country of its blood and treasure, November fifth will be your liberation day.

Violence and blood. Again.

There’s more. He asserted that deporting unauthorized immigrants “will be a bloody story.” He was speaking about a situation that he has imagined happening in Colorado, within a ramble about unauthorized immigration.

Similarly, he has repeatedly said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” The phrase has a “deep racist and antisemitic history.”

We’ve been down this path, in the Eisenhower Administration. It took a year to return as many as a million unauthorized immigrants to Mexico. Operation Wetback was a cooperative effort with the Mexican Government (but its tally is questionable).

Imagine. Trump wants to increase the scale by at least an order of magnitude.

I know 10 or 11 million sounds like a lot. But it’s not in the context of 345,000,000 Americans. Unauthorized immigrants account for about 3 percent of our total population. (Most experts contest Trump’s claim of 20,000,000 unauthorized immigrants. )

I leave you with this: what about the children should Trump win?

Pew Research reports that in 2022, 4.4 million children born in the US (thus, citizens) and younger than 18 live in a household with at least one unauthorized immigrant parent.

We know Trump thinks nothing of separating children from their parents. He did it when he was president. Last year, almost 1,000 of those children had still not been reunited. That’s a psychic wound that may never be resolved.

Yes, Harris combined two speeches. Had she said “there will be blood” instead of the shorthand, bloodbath, the fact checkers would have been silent.

But the substance – that Trump is calling for ‘bloody’ mass deportation with no apparent thought about consequences – is true.

 
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The stakes in November have never been more urgent, nor the choices more extreme.

Remember: you are not voting for one person. You are voting for a team.

I’m voting for Team America not Team Russia-Hungary-North Korea.

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