Context collapse

On Saturday, Donald Trump spoke at a rally in Ohio.

These remarks were covered prominently by several major outlets. But it was a different comment that dominated discussion of the rally—one in which Trump predicted (or threatened) “a bloodbath for the country” if he isn’t reelected. Trump’s invocation of the word drove headlines across the media landscape. On TV, Republican politicians were asked to respond to it.

In response, several of them—in addition to Trump’s campaign and other boosters of the former president—claimed that the media was taking the “bloodbath” comment out of context: it came during a section of Trump’s speech about the state of the US auto industry, and was clearly meant, these people said, in an economic sense. Many Trump critics countered that it was fair to highlight the remark, arguing, variously, that Trump doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt given his long history of violent rhetoric, that it’s not at all clear that he was only referring to the auto industry, and that even if he was, his use of the word “bloodbath” was still hyperbolic to the point of demagoguery. Others—from the left to more Trump-skeptical precincts of the right—suggested that Trump’s use of “bloodbath” was at worst ambiguous, and that the media didn’t need to focus on it given other things he indisputably did say at the rally. “I think it’s important we start demanding the media vigorously cover the insane, anti-constitutional, violent and dictator-loving rhetoric Trump uses on a regular basis,” Sarah Longwell, a leading anti-Trump Republican, said. “But when you take things out of context you do more harm than good.”

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