There was some back-and-forth on the blog today about what Trump meant when he referred to a “bloodbath” in a campaign speech.
George Conway 3rd has a wonderful twitter feed. He is a great explainer of Trump.
He tweeted today about the confusion surrounding Trump’s use of the term “bloodbath.” Did he mean that there would be a bloodbath if Biden won? Or did he refer to a financial bloodbath if his plan to slap 100% tariffs on foreign cars was not enacted?
Conway tweeted the following:
There’s some commentary on here saying we should disregard Trump’s “bloodbath” remarks last night because he was talking about potential harms to the auto industry.
That is misguided. 1/x
Trump may well have been referring to a “bloodbath” in that industry. He’s sufficiently incoherent that, as is so often the case with him, it’s hard to tell one way or the other what exactly he’s talking about at any given moment. 2/x
I’m willing to assume for the sake of argument that he was referring to cars. And it makes no difference to his malicious intent or the danger he and his rhetoric pose. 3/x
What matters is that he consistently uses apocalyptic and violent language in an indiscriminate fashion as a result of his psychopathy and correlative authoritarian tendencies, and because he’s just plain evil. 4/x
It’s a classic trait and technique of authoritarian demagogues. He catastrophizes everything to rile up his cultish supporters, and to bind them to him, and to make them willing to do his bidding. 5/x
That’s dangerous all around because he’s encouraging them to believe that conditions are so bad or will become so bad, and that the political opposition is so awful, that anything is justified—including law-breaking and violence—to prevent those conditions and to destroy the opposition. 6/x
And so it doesn’t matter what he’s specifically referring to at the moment. He could be talking about trans people in public bathrooms or the state of the auto industry or the border—it doesn’t matter. 7/x
He’s a dangerous psychopath, and after more than eight years of watching his sick behavior, we must not give him the benefit of the doubt. 8/8 (end).
Diane Ravitch's blog 
His derangement covers all areas ( physical , mental , emotional and societal ) and thus leaves no room for compromise. To Trump , is equivalent to surrender . To him, as to his comrade – in – arms Putin , what the people want is irrelevant if it interferes with his own personal interests.
Any cursory reading of history will reveal the outcome of such a myopia – destruction , death and a contesting war that no one wins .
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George Conway is an interesting character. He was one of the “elves” who targeted the Clintons when the Right went after the Clintons with hammer, tong and slander in the 1990s. Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham, two of Conway’s co-conspirators, have stayed true to their mendacious ways, while Conway has recently emerged as a fierce Trump opponent. I am not clear on the precise perimeters of Conway’s reversal, but he has been brutal when it comes to The Donald.
With that in mind, I must say he’s been “no holds barred” as to Trump. And near as I can tell, he’s been accurate.
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Kelly Ann had the right idea. Good ol’ George caught TDS early and, like so many, has let DJT occupy his brain ever since.
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Kellyanne Conway has never had a decent idea in her life.
And Donald Trump has no quality that is consistent with the Constitution or beneficial to the commonweal. He has never read the Constitution, much less understood how it works and what its purpose is. He exists only for his own self-aggrandizement. His immediate task is to stay out of jail.
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He has established many firsts.
The first president to be impeached twice.
The first president to be indicted after his term ended.
The first president to refuse to transition out of his job peaceably.
The first president to maintain that he won despite no evidence.
The first president to run for re-election to stay out of prison.
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I have seriously wondered how it is even possible that anyone could support a lowlife like Trump. He is a liar, a serial con man and rapist, profoundly ignorant, and inarticulate. Jared told him that acknowledging COVID and acting on that acknowledgement could stall the economy and hurt his reelection, and so he lied about the severity and opposed public safety measures, which cost many hundreds of thousands of Americans their lives. He is a fanboy of dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un. He ordered his Secretary of Homeland Security to SHOOT unarmed asylum seekers and the U.S. military to move against protestors exercising their First Amendment Rights. Fortunately, the smarter, saner people who worked for him refused because both would have been illegal. He oversaw a program of taking small children from their parents. He claims to be a Christian but doesn’t go to church and can’t name a single verse from the Bible. He thought that we should inject disinfectants and send astronauts to the sun. He thought that stealth airplanes were actually invisible and that the Continental Army captured the British airports. He has been a money launderer for Russian mobsters for decades, and he is such a terrible businessman that he would have lost everything if it weren’t for this infusion of Russian money. He told an interviewer that he was leaving Ivana Trump BECAUSE HAVING HIS CHILDREN RUINED HER BODY and that being a rich man, he could DO BETTER. He constantly made sexual references to his own daughter and fantasized aloud about dating her. He turned meetings with Gold Star parents into opportunities to brag about himself.
I seriously think that anyone who supports this guy–given what he is–a criminal, predator, and traitor–is themselves as nuts as he is. There’s no other explanation. He is the lowest of the low. Parasitic wasp larvae have a more highly developed moral sense than he does.
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cx: is himself or herself as nuts
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So true. I cannot understand the cult either. Trump has no redeeming qualities.
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Quite the company you keep there, April.
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George Conway saw Trump up close and interacted with him many times. George did not let his desire to be part of the inner circle of power compromise his integrity. He realized that Trump was a very stupid, impetuous and dangerous man. KellyAnne is a hanger-on who loves the thrill of being an insider, even though Trump is a sexual predator and a liar.
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In other news, Russia and China are both pushing for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine because they know that Russia is losing and losing badly and want to intervene now, when (they think) Russia can still make a deal to keep some part of the territory it has illegally captured. NOT GONNA HAPPEN. NO DEAL. The invader must be driven out of every square centimeter of Ukraine, including Crimea and ALL of the Donbas. And dictator-for-life Vladimir Putin and his henchmen need to be arrested and brought to trial in the Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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As Jimmy Kimmel quipped, isn’t it long past Donny’s jail time?
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Long past
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Trump showed his disturbances very early on. We didn’t need to see their manifestations. In the last book he read, “Little Red Riding Hood,” he rooted for the wolf.
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lol
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Sorry, I meant to say
Trump showed his disturbances very early on. We didn’t need to wait to see their manifestations. In the last book he read, “Little Red Riding Hood,” he rooted for the wolf.
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ROFL
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This sentence makes it a clear as can be: He catastrophizes everything to rile up his cultish supporters, and to bind them to him, and to make them willing to do his bidding.
Every word out of his mouth is a dog whistle. Context and content do not matter. One word. They know what he means.
He portrays himself as a victim. The cause may vary depending on the audience. How does he claim to be a victim who can “relate” to all categories of people? He claims to feel their pain and will howl at the moon for them against the cause of their ills.
Billionaires – a victim of all those tax regulations …… CEOs – a victim of industry regulations…… Middle class – blame Hillary, Obama, how bad “the economy” is ……. Low income / can’t find a job – blame immigration…… Less than HS education – It’s those liberals, ivy league boys, scientists, and “intellectuals” and public schools
Every (every!) so-called speech includes someone to blame, scapegoats, and a code-word for each.
“Bloodbath” – I avoid the news. I read two papers and this and a few blogs. That’s it. Try it. You will be informed and it’s good for your mental health.
So – Until I read this blog, I did not know the speech was about the automobile industry; however, I heard and saw “bloodbath” dozens of times in a few days – in “the scroll” you can’t avoid, in the “promo for “Today at 7 on News99, What did he mean by bloodbath?” In the pop-up news headline when logging on to a browser and all the overheard conversations on the train “did you hear what he said the other day?”
He did not say, “Come to DC on Jan 6 and create havoc and kill police.” ”He said, “Come to DC on Jan 6” and then told them to march to the capitol. They knew what he meant.
“Bloodbath” – they know what he means. All the “catastrophizing” (that is a really good term) – they know what he means. It’s not what, it’s when he blows the whistle.
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Trump knows how to provoke. His dogs will hear the whistle.
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You have him cold. Exactly right. It’s instinctively the way that a mobster talks. Make what you want clear without saying it outright. “Good thing nothin’ bad has happened to this guy and his family.” That sort of thing.
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It reminds me of the old Monty Python RAF sketch:
“Nice air base you have here, Colonel. Be a pity if something happened to it. Planes burn, you know…”
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I continue to think he’s just referring to how the auto industry—nay, the whole country!—will go down the tubes if he’s not elected. It’s a classic Trumpian kind of hyper-superlative. “It’ll be a bloodbath, like nothing anyone’s ever seen.” Also, the more time people spend passionately arguing that “bloodbath” was intended to have sinister overtones, when there’s another, very reasonable interpretation, creates a fog that makes people more likely to tune out the truly insane and dangerous things Trump says and does.
Personally, I think proposing 100% tariffs is more insane and dangerous than using the word “bloodbath.”
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FLERP, how can financial losses to American auto manufacturers be characterized as a “bloodbath”? Not to belabor the point, but it makes no sense. Why would it be a “bloodbath” for the “entire country” if more people buy foreign cars?
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How can losses of seats in congressional primaries be characterized as a “bloodbath”? Yet people of both parties have said as much. It’s just a dumb hyper-superlative to mean “really bad.”
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No, it’s Trump. He means bloodshed and death. He means rioting in the streets by his minions who will of course believe there was fraud, fraud being defined as “Trump not getting his way”.
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This post by Timothy Snyder will be quite clarifying; don’t miss it.
*Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won’t. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.*
*Another pleasant illusion is that the strongman will unite the nation. But an aspiring dictator will always claim that some belong and others don’t. He will define one group after another as the enemy. This might feel good, so long as you feel that you are on the right side of the line. But now fear is the essence of life. The politics of us-and-them, once begun, never ends.*
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-strongman-fantasy?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web
I further suggest you pair Snyder’s column with Heather Cox Richardson, who reports on Viktor Orbán’s visit in DC, not to the elected head of state, but to the Heritage Foundation.
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Very well said. And it covers all the bases.
That said; theres no doubt that this was another call to arms. None whatsoever.
I grew up with some very violent bullies. Through their lives, from childhood to even now when I occasionally see them on FB, it’s always been the same:
”Did I say that? No!”
Classic “You ain’t got nuthin’ on me coppuh. I’m clean. See…”.
This man is terrible.
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In related news, there are reports today that Trump is considering hiring Paul Manafort to oversee fundraising for his campaign. Who better to work on bringing in some Russian mobster dough?
Has the bloody Chekist elf soured on his dog Donnie?
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Oh no, Putin needs Trump to win.
He will immediately withdraw all American support for Ukraine. Withdraw from NATO. Give Putin the ok to reassemble the USSR.
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Source of my comment: Putin has recently made disparaging remarks about his dog Donnie to the press, possibly because his intel tells him that The Idiot is going to lose bigly, despite the polls. Putin is like Trump in that he lacks loyalty to anyone but himself. So, while Trump would indeed deliver Putin’s laundry list of imperialist desires, Putin is a practical man. So, he may be reevaluating the whole arrangement with Traitorous Don.
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I hope Vlad cuts off the money spigot.
But there’s always his disinformation machine.
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Trump has now admitted that he’s a total fraud.
“Financial Genius” Trump has filed a sworn court statement in which he says that it is an “impossibility” for him to put up the $475 million bond that he needs to appeal the financial fraud case that he lost in New York. And he says that he can’t find any bond company that will take the risk of putting up the bond for him.
And this is the guy who has been telling us that he’s a multi-billionaire.
The most likely fact is that Trump Tower and all his other properties are mortgaged up to the hilt and that he is in debt to lenders all over the world, including the Russians, which would explain why Trump loves Putin.
And now that Trump has installed his daughter-in-law in control of the Republican Party’s money, he will likely begin using the Party as his personal piggy bank to pay his legal bills, taking money away from what the Party needs for the coming elections.
And yet, Trump’s adoring fans keep writing him checks from their own hard-earned money, proving the old saying that “There’s a sucker born every minute” — and today they wear red hats so that you know who they are.
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