About Trump's "bloodbath" remarks...

I'll be brief.

I wish I had a dollar for every time Donald Trump has said something that set off a debate about what he really meant.

Was his statement as extreme and alarming as his opponents claim? Or were his comments, as his supporters say, taken out of context or exaggerated?

So the argument tends to go.

And so it goes with the former president’s statement over the weekend at a rally in Ohio that, “Now, if I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole - that's going to be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. That'll be the least of it.”

The warning of a “bloodbath” if he loses the election - from a man who is facing criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and actions leading up to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol - alarmed many observers.

Trump’s defenders - and his campaign - argue the statement is being taken out of context - the context being a discussion about the future of the auto industry.

Either way, this dynamic isn’t a new one.

Even in 2016, when I covered Trump’s first presidential campaign, this was becoming a predictable pattern. As I wrote for NPR, “Trump has pushed the boundaries of acceptable political speech from a presidential candidate through what he says — and often through what he leaves unsaid.”

Trump has also pushed those boundaries - and shattered norms - by making statements that excite his base and then, when criticized for their tone and tenor, claiming he didn’t mean what people are saying it means: “He says things that are really extreme and over the edge and then says, ‘You're putting words in my mouth,’” political scientist Erin Cassese told me in that 2016 NPR story.

Yesterday, on NPR’s All Things Considered, my colleague Scott Detrow spoke with Dartmouth Political Scientist Brendan Nyhan about this. Nyhan said Trump’s political statements often employ “plausible deniability”:

“Trump often relies on plausible deniability. It's important to make clear that the bloodbath comment was in the context of a discussion of the auto industry, but it's also hard not to be worried when a president who inspired a violent insurrection and often explicitly endorses political violence is using language like that.”

~Brendan Nyhan, political scientist at Dartmouth, speaking to NPR’s All Things Considered

We can’t see Trump’s heart or prove his intent. Journalists can’t mind read.

But we can see how these debates have played out before - and how Trump’s supporters have responded to his words in the past.