Former President Donald Trump told a crowd in Dayton, Ohio, on Saturday that, if he does not get elected, “it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it.”
Trump’s campaign and his supporters insist that he was simply talking about an “economic bloodbath” for the automotive industry, which was his topic immediately before and after this interjection. We agree with those who think that he was not just talking about cars. Trump was implicitly threatening the nation with violence. That follows from his words and demeanor in the rest of the speech, his overall positioning as Americans’ savior from existential threats, and the broader context of his attacks on democracy (as analyzed by one of the authors of this piece analyzes in the American Autocracy Threat Tracker).
Trump can be artful in how he couches incitement.
Though the arc of Trump’s thoughts is famously hard to follow, his campaign rhetoric repeats his basic narratives with small variations — a tactic of successful propaganda — to shape the way his audiences think and feel. In his telling, he is both the omnipotent defender of America, whose defeat would bring the abyss, and the victim, persecuted by his enemies for trying to save the nation. Those who assist him in saving the country, as his armed followers did Jan. 6, are patriots. Trump presents dangerous speech and incitements to violence within these narratives as digressions that defy logic or in vague terms that preserve his plausible deniability.
His speech in Ohio is a good example. Here is the complete passage of his remarks:
We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and [China is] not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected. Now 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 will be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars.
Perhaps the initial reference is to the car business, but he leaves out the word “industry” in the first, fragmentary description of the “bloodbath,” so the audience can fill in the larger consequences for the whole. Then he invokes previous warnings of apocalyptic outcomes for America, such as terrorist attacks. The implication is clear: challenges for the car industry will “be the least of” the country’s problems “if I don’t get elected.”
Trump can be artful in how he couches incitement, and he has consistently twinned the language of incitement with rhetoric designed to create a sense of existential fear and dread in his audience. Authoritarians know that to get people to overcome taboos about committing violence, instilling fear for the fate of the leader is not enough: you have to convince your followers that they, their loved ones and “civilization” as we know it will come to an end if they don’t act.
Thanks to the meticulous analysis and documentation by the Jan. 6 Committee, we can use Trump’s rhetoric about Jan. 6 as a case study. His infamous statement on Twitter inviting his followers to come to D.C. for Jan. 6 — “will be wild” — was vague where it needed to be, but also specific to the cause of saving him from an unjust fate that endangered America. Telling his followers that “if you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country anymore” links fighting for Trump to saving themselves from apocalypse.
Trump’s 2024 campaign builds on these narratives in conjuring threats to the nation, and introducing violence as a solution. His repeated declarations along the lines of “they’re not going after me, they’re going after you” are in this vein. So is his identification of the enemies who are threatening Americans and all that they hold dear.
The violent implications of the “bloodbath” passage are magnified by the inclusion of more autocratic messaging in Saturday’s speech. The violent implications of the “bloodbath” passage are magnified by the inclusion of more autocratic messaging in Saturday’s speech. Echoing other autocrats who scapegoat vulnerable minorities, Trump often targets migrants, previously referring to them as “poisoning the blood of America.” He did so again Saturday, saying, “These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it.” The former president also promised to carry out the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” adding, “If you call them people. I don’t know if you call them people … We’re gonna get them out fast.” Trump further expanded on this autocratic messaging by suggesting that security forces should be able to run roughshod at the behest of the regime. He said (not for the first time) that he intends to “indemnify” or “give immunity” to police officers— that is, to protect them from facing legal consequences if they break the law. He will “indemnify all police officers and law enforcement officials throughout the United States to protect them from being destroyed by the radical left for taking strong action on crime,” he told the crowd in Dayton. Autocrats also rely upon dedicated paramilitary cadres and a recently touted “day one” promise of Trump’s is to pardon and release from prison many of the Jan. 6 rioters, who are serving prison sentences for their involvement in attacking the Capitol. He repeated this message Saturday, saying, “You see the spirit from the hostages, and that’s what they are […] hostages. They’ve been treated terribly and very unfairly, and you know that and everybody knows that. And we’re gonna be working on that …” Trump claims it is the “radical left” that is opposed to the threat he poses, but a growing list of people who served in his administration, including his own former vice president, are part of that opposition. Many of his former top Cabinet officials have warned in no uncertain terms of the “irreparable” harm and “hyper-aggressive behavior” we should brace for if he returns to the White House. It would be the “end of American democracy” as former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin contends. All of this provides important context for Trump’s warning of a “bloodbath” if he is not elected. The reality is that the only people taking his words out of context are those who seek to excuse those remarks. We are on notice of Trump’s autocratic promises. They are deadly serious, and we should treat them that way.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a historian and commentator on authoritarianism and propaganda. She is a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, the recipient of Guggenheim, Fulbright and other fellowships and an adviser to Protect Democracy. She is a regular contributor to MSNBC, CNN and other media outlets. She publishes Lucid, a newsletter about threats to democracy. Her latest book, "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present" (2020), looks at how illiberal leaders use propaganda, corruption, violence and machismo and how they can be defeated.
Norman Eisen
Norman Eisen is a co-founder and board member of Democracy Defenders Action and publisher of The Contrarian. Eisen previously served as a U.S. ambassador and in senior White House and congressional staff roles. 
