SKILLS: This time around, has Candidate Trump...

MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2024

...perhaps improved his skills? As a courtesy, we're going to show you the fuller text of what the candidate said.

Our guess would be that he knew what he was doing—that he was employing one of skills—when he used the word we highlight in this bit of transcript.

That would be our current guess, although we can't say that we know. As you can see, Candidate Trump was discussing the developing state of the American automobile industry when he employed the word:

CANDIDATE TRUMP (3/16/24): If you look at [the leadership of] the United Auto Workers, what they've done to their people is horrible,

They want to do this all-electric nonsense, where the cars don't go far, they cost too much and they're all made in China. And the head of the United Auto Workers probably never shook hands with a Republican before. They're destroying—

You know, Mexico has taken, over a period of thirty years, 34 percent of the automobile manufacturing business in our country. Think of it. Went to Mexico.

China now is building a couple of massive plants where they're going to build the cars in Mexico and think—they think they're going to sell those cars into the United States, with no tax at the border.

Let me tell you something to China. If you’re listening, President Xi—and you and I are friends—but he understands the way I deal. Those big monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now—and you think you're going to get that, you’re going to not hire Americans and you’re going to sell the cars to us, no. 

We’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line—

[APPLAUSE]

—and you’re 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. They’re building massive factories.

A friend of mine—all he does is build car manufacturing plants—he's the biggest in the world...

And so on from there. 

(To watch the entire speech, click here for the C-Span videotape. You should jump ahead to minute 32 for the part of the speech in question.)

And so on from there! Meanwhile, the word in question is "bloodbath." As of yesterday afternoon, the candidate's use of that colorful term had launched a thousand ships. For the basic report from NBC News, you can just click here.

Candidate Trump made the statements in question on Saturday afternoon. We've shown you a reasonably large chunk of his actual text.

With blinding speed, a much smaller chunk of the candidate's text had been propelled into the world. It came from Acyn Torabi, a former "Internet influencer" who now seems to direct a great deal of liberal commentary through his work as "researcher and senior digital editor" for the website MeidasTouch.com. 

(Torabi tends to post as "Acyn," full stop. Does his work really shape that much liberal commentary? It's hard to be totally sure.)

At any rate, the candidate delivered his speech on Saturday. We've shown you a fairly large chunk of what he said in the passage which created the latest firestorm.

With lightning speed, Acyn posted a much shorter chunk of what he had said. As you can see, this is what Acyn quickly posted:

CANDIDATE TRUMP: Now, If I don't get elected, it's gonna be a bloodbath. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. 

Acyn's post was stripped of context, as his posts typically are. 

He even dropped part of that short segment out! At this site, we may know what you need, but Acyn may know what you want!

Given the skill levels of American journalists and pundits, stripped-down versions of this candidate's statements will often be warmly received. Sometimes, Acyn "paraphrases" what the candidate said—reinvents his words in such a way as to make his statement even more exciting for us in the blue tribe world.

We aren't big fans of Acyn's approach; your assessment may differ. That said:

In this case, what did the candidate mean by his statement? More precisely, what did he mean by the part of his statement in which he predicted "a bloodbath" is he doesn't get elected?

The candidate's campaign quickly said that he was referring to an economic bloodbath. If President Biden gets re-elected, we'll have a general economic mess.

They said that was what he meant. That's what his campaign quickly said.

Helped along by Acyn's editing, blue tribe members more quickly announced that he meant something quite different. According to various blue tribe observers, he meant there would be rioting in the streets if his campaign failed.

We'll be discussing this question as the week proceeds, but we'll do so in a larger context—in a context which involves an array of things we saw over the weekend.

We'll refer to the (genuinely idiotic) discussions we saw on the Fox News Channel last Friday afternoon and evening—idiotic discussion which may be quite effective in driving the red tribe's messaging forward.

We'll be discussing the remarkably calm and orderly interview the candidate gave to the Fox News Channel's Howard Kurtz—an interview which, in edited form, consumed the full hour of yesterday morning's weekly program, MediaBuzz.

We'll be discussing the skill levels of our own blue tribe's high-end pundit corps—and the (possibly diminished) skill levels of our own Candidate Biden. For the record, the skill levels of the professional pundit corps have often been extremely low, dating back to the days when they insisted, for years on end, that an earlier candidate had actually claimed that he invented the Internet.

(A thousand other embellished claims followed that first embellished claim. We refer to embellished claims by the mainstream press, not by that particular candidate.)

Concerning Candidate Trump, our current guess would be this:

We'll guess that his skill levels have developed to the point where he uses language of the type in question as a way of "trolling" our own blue tribe. In the present instance, our current best guess would be this:

According to this provisional theory, we'll guess that he dropped the term "bloodbath" into his discussion to generate a reaction from our own blue tribe. Strikingly, we saw this specific possibility being explicitly discussed, last evening, on a Fox News Channel program! 

We'll also discuss a remarkable front-page report in this morning's New York Times. We think that report is so instructive that we'll discuss it this afternoon.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep—and events now move very quickly. It seems to us that Candidate Trump's skill levels as a campaigner may now be advanced over where they once stood.

The skills in question may be fiendish, but they're skills nonetheless! In other sectors of the modern American discourse, the skill levels are virtually nonexistent.

Who will end up winning in November? We can't tell you that. There is one thing we're able to tell you as we close this morning's report. We're able to tell you this:

Almost surely, you've seen none of our blue tribe's pundits discuss the substance of what the candidate said!

Is it true? Has thirty-four percent of the American automobile industry really decamped to Mexico? Are electric vehicles all being built in China?

Is it true, as the candidate went on to say, that giant plants are being built in Mexico—but new plants being built in the United States are much smaller?

The candidate's comments to that effect generated applause from his audience. Those substantive comments went undiscussed on today's Morning Joe as pundits said that major American journalists are behaving like "idiots" when they try to figure out why voters might support Candidate Trump.

We told you this a long time ago—you can't run a middle-class democracy with a multimillionaire press corps! Has this candidate developed the kinds of skills which will let him take advantage of that current group of "thought leaders?" Which will let him get elected again?

We can't answer that question. At present, though, we've begun to wonder if this candidate's array of skills is simply better than ours at this point in time.

Was the candidate trolling our tribe when he used that colorful word? 

We'll offer that as a possible theory. But as of this morning, we haven't seen that larger discussion about the American auto industry, and the chances are fairly good that we never will.

This afternoon: The red tribe's world is going raunchy, the New York Times has now said

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