In a new appearance on MSNBC after Donald Trump started talking at a campaign rally about a “bloodbath” that supposedly would follow if he loses the presidential election later this year, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) characterized the ex-president and presumptive GOP nominee for this year’s elections as fundamentally unfit for the role he is seeking.
“Donald Trump has shown us who he is time and time and time again, and we ought to take him seriously. This is the insurrectionist president. This is the man who egged on the most violent insurrection on our Capitol, or attack on our Capitol, since the war of 1812, and that violence has now metastasized in this kind of continual attack on the dignity and integrity of our democracy […]. And so this election is a binary choice, and we’re just being reminded time and time again about how much is at stake — nothing less than the future of our republic,” Warnock said on the air.
Regarding the “bloodbath” comment specifically, the Trump campaign has claimed the ex-president was just predicting destructive upheaval in the United States’ auto industry, although he has used language hearkening not to economic developments but seemingly real-world, physical violence before.
That’s precisely the accusation around Trump’s push to “fight” in a speech at an outdoor rally in Washington, D.C., on the day of what became the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, which Trump started trying to evidently justify that day, calling it merely the “things and events” that happen when a presidential election is stolen, which evidence shows didn’t happen.
And Trump consistently speaks in existential terms about the supposed stakes for the country in the event he loses. It’s different from Democrats’ general rhetoric because while the current president’s party expresses worry about the future of democracy, what Trump is claiming seemingly amounts to the destruction of the United States. In the meantime, he also promotes what amounts to hatred of the U.S. as it currently stands, extending his animosity towards the Biden administration to much of the country. “We are now, under Crooked Joe Biden, a Third World Nation, which uses the Injustice System to go after his political opponent, ME!” Trump posted.
