Writing with former ethics czar Norm Eisen, authoritarian expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat warned that one of Donald Trump's key tactics is talking with such vague generalities that he can't be pinned down to answer for anything — including his most violent rhetoric.
Ben-Ghiat included Trump in her book about dictators, "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present."
Trump left many shocked Saturday when, at a speech in Ohio, he warned there was going "to be a bloodbath." His supporters said he was referring specifically to the electric car industry, and not making a violent threat.
"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," said Trump.
His supporters insist it was all taken out of context and Trump was neither being violent nor encouraging violence.
"We agree with those who think that he was not just talking about cars," Eisen and Ben-Ghiat said on MSNBC.com. "Trump was implicitly threatening the nation with violence. That follows from his words and demeanor in the rest of the speech, his overall positioning as Americans’ savior from existential threats, and the broader context of his attacks on democracy."
The writers explain that it may sometimes be "famously hard to follow" Trump's meandering thoughts or his speeches, but each of them contains the same theme describing himself as both "the omnipotent defender of America" and the "victim" who is being "persecuted by his enemies to save the nation."
The initial reference might be about the automotive industry, "but he leaves out the word 'industry' in the first, fragmentary description of the 'bloodbath,' so the audience can fill in the larger consequences for the whole," the authors write. "Then he invokes previous warnings of apocalyptic outcomes for America, such as terrorist attacks. The implication is clear: challenges for the car industry will 'be the least of' the country’s problems 'if I don’t get elected.'"
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Washington Post columnist Aaron Blake made a similar observation, noting that Trump could "have been speaking metaphorically," but in the broader context, he wants actual violence, and he's been encouraging it for months.
Blake quoted Trump's first GOP primary, saying 'I think you’d have riots" if he was denied the Republican nomination. In 2020, he recalled Trump claiming that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that ballot drop boxes were legal would "induce violence in the streets." He later promised, "Bad things will happen, and bad things lead to other type of things. It’s a very dangerous thing for our country."
Blake ultimately compared it to the example of "his supporters seizing on his rhetoric when they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021." It makes it more difficult to buy his "bloodbath" comment as something benign, he said.
He closed by saying that one comment here or there may be less serious, but Trump has a long track record of violent rhetoric and, this time, the message is "clear."
