NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss took the media furor over former President Donald Trump’s “bloodbath” comments to new heights during a Monday appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
During an Ohio campaign rally over the weekend, Trump predicted a “bloodbath” if he does not win reelection in 2024, and media outlets fell all over themselves trying to make it look as though he was predicting politically motivated violence and a literal bloodbath. They left out important context, however — namely that he had made the comment while talking about the potential impact of a car company owned by Communist China building vehicles in Mexico in order to evade U.S. tariffs.
Beschloss left out the context as well — and suggested that Trump would promote political violence whether he won or lost.
WATCH:
MSNBC’s @BeschlossDC: “A major party candidate is saying, ‘You elect me, there’s going to be dictatorship, bloodbath, violence, retribution against my political enemies that equals what we’ve seen in Germany & Italy & other places.” pic.twitter.com/Yg7KHdWibq
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 18, 2024
Host Mika Brzezinski set him up to take that particular path, claiming as she introduced him that Trump was beginning to sound “more and more like a fascist” and complaining that too few people knew history well enough to recognize the signs.
“There’s that vulnerability that Trump preys upon,” Brzezinski said. “And then there are those who are making the choice — I need to understand that. Is there any precedent, or is this how fascism works?”
Brzezinski went on to suggest that no one could support Trump unless they were either compromised or uneducated. “Are they sucked in and brought in on different terms whether Trump has something on some Republican leaders or others are just so uninformed — they don’t care. Is it a mixture? How does it work? Is there a precedent?”
“I totally agree with what you just said,” Beschloss told Brzezinski. “That’s how fascism and totalitarianism and — in Germany’s case, the Holocaust came to Germany, which had been a country where there were big institutions of democracy until as you well know, the early 1930s.”
“In a way, Donald Trump has done us all a favor,” Beschloss continued, arguing that Trump was making it easier for people to identify the risk of fascism by telling the American people who he was when he made such comments.
“A major party candidate is saying, ‘You elect me, there’s going to be dictatorship, bloodbath, violence, retribution against my political enemies that equals what we saw in Germany and Italy and other places,'” he said, suggesting that even if Trump were to win his reelection bid, political violence would necessarily follow.