The Biden campaign warned after quickly controversial rhetoric from ex-President Donald Trump at a rally that the presumptive Republican nominee for president this year “wants another January 6,” meaning the political violence that enveloped the U.S. Capitol in early 2021. Large mobs descended on the complex, inspired by lies tracing to Trump himself of a stolen presidential election — lies that he still propagates.
“Tonight, Donald Trump said there would be a ‘bloodbath’ if he wasn’t elected and that if he lost there would be no more elections,” the Biden campaign’s statement said, adding: “This is who Donald Trump is: a loser who gets beat by over 7 million votes and then instead of appealing to a wider mainstream audience doubles down on his threats of political violence. He wants another January 6, but the American people are going to give him another electoral defeat.”
Trump and his team have claimed the threatening reference to an imagined “bloodbath” referred just to hypothetical negative impacts in the United States’ auto industry, though “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough was among those casting doubt on that description.
What Trump told rally-goers in a discussion of the auto industry went as follows: “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’ll be the least of it.” “Obviously, he’s talking about a bloodbath for America. It’s laid out in the terms of it,” Scarborough said. “He knew what he was doing. We’re not stupid. Americans aren’t stupid.”
And the rhetoric mirrors past — and present! — debacles ensnaring Trump elsewhere, like his struggles to unequivocally condemn far-right marchers in Virginia and his ongoing attempts to excuse or gloss over the violence at the U.S. Capitol on that fateful day in early 2021. Trump, in fact, has proposed pardons for and the release of detainees with criminal allegations originating in the violence, though a large share of Capitol riot defendants have pleaded guilty.
