The Media Keep Helping Trump by Lying about Him

Where were you when you heard that former president Donald Trump was reviving the specter of January 6, bluntly threatening mass bloodshed from his legions of MAGA minions should the election be stolen from him again? Were you asleep in your bed like some civilian, caught unawares by the sudden onslaught of outrage? Or were you prepared like a true warrior of the Republic, commando-scrolling your social-media account furiously, screaming about the story with comments like, “Oh my god this guy I can’t even”?

Ah, “bloodbathgate”: the scandal currently consuming America’s elite political shut-ins. (The names of political kerfuffles seem to be getting more and more lurid, as if the media is desperate to keep our straying attention.) For those still unaware of the clear and present danger that looms, Trump spoke at a rally in Ohio the other day and apparently threatened that there would be an economic “bloodbath” in America if he wasn’t elected in November. (In other words, he used the same nonsensical and colloquially phrased rhetoric that he has been spouting since roughly 1986.) This of course immediately turned — via Democratic partisans and the media — into the implied equivalent of “TRUMP CALLS FOR NATIONWIDE MASSACRES IN EVENT OF LOSS.” All the headlines emphasize it: “Bloodbath” this, “bloodbath” that (or, if you follow the New York Times style guide, the far more genteel “blood bath”).