"Bloodbath" gone from Morning Joe!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 2024

Also, new polling data: Who will win November's election?

We have no idea. It's our impression that Trump may win if he can survive his criminal trials. It also depends on what happens with the pair of major addiction addicts, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West.

(Presumably due to their lack of accomplishment, the addicts can attract attention no other way. And so they pretend to be running for president, taking a chance on changing world history as they force-feed their egos.)

We don't know who's going to win in November. That said, the Wall Steet Journal has released new polling figures from seven swing states, and we were struck by the way the results were chyroned on this morning's "cable news" programs.

Let's start with the Journal's news report about the new polling data. Dual headlines included, the report begins like this:

Trump Leads Biden in Six of Seven Swing States, WSJ Poll Finds 
Incumbent trails in most battlegrounds that decided 2016 and 2020 elections

Donald Trump is leading President Biden in six of the seven most competitive states in the 2024 election, propelled by broad voter dissatisfaction with the national economy and deep doubts about Biden’s capabilities and job performance, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds.

The poll of the election’s main battlegrounds shows Trump holding leads of between 2 and 8 percentage points in six states—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina—on a test ballot that includes third-party and independent candidates. Trump holds similar leads when voters are asked to choose only between him and Biden.

Those numbers aren't great for blue tribe voters. That said, November's a long way off. 

At any rate, the weekday Fox & Friends crew was reporting those numbers by 6:09 this morning. The chyron beneath them said this:

POLL: TRUMP AHEAD OF BIDEN IN SIX OF SEVEN SWING STATES, TIED IN WISCONSIN

That chyron was perfectly accurate. On Morning Joe, the new numbers were discussed starting at 6:22. As you can see, Mika's initial report was perfectly accurate, but the chyron was soon saying this:

WSJ POLL: BIDEN & TRUMP CLOSE IN SEVEN SWING STATES

Neither chyron was flatly false. Maybe it all depends on what the meaning of "close" is! 

(As you can see in the WSJ data, Trump charts a seven- or eight-point lead in North Carolina. That's drifting away from "close," but November's a long way off and there's always sampling error.)

November is a long way off—and a (somewhat peculiar) criminal trial may get started in the next few weeks. That (slightly peculiar) criminal trial might hurt Trump extremely badly, or it could conceivably help him. 

Beyond that, there's no conceivable way to know who will win in the end.

That said, we were struck by the way these morning shows treated a second new topic. We refer to Candidate Trump's resurrection of the once-controversial term, "bloodbath."

Yesterday, at a campaign event in Michigan, Candidate Trump began giving prominent play to that term. Politico's report on this matter appears beneath this headline:

Trump rails against ‘border bloodbath’ as Democrats bash him on abortions

The term "Border Bloodbath" was featured on high-visibility signage during Trump's event. More precisely, the Trump campaign's newly prominent term seems to be this:

BIDEN'S BORDER BLOODBATH

Plainly, Trump has decided to showcase a word for which he was recently criticized. As you can see by clicking this link, the weekday crew at Fox & Friends was exulting in this decision as of 6:06 a.m. 

During the 5 o'clock hour, the Fox & Friends First team had discussed the choice of words, on two separate occasions, starting with a tease at 5:07 a.m. Quite plainly, Red America's "journalistic" leadership cadre was promoting Trump's use of this term.

On Morning Joe, the treatment of this matter was strikingly different. To wit:

As you can see thanks to the Internet Archive, the term "bloodbath:" was never mentioned, not even once, during today's Morning Joe. 

The program ran its full four hours. The word "bloodbath" was never spoken.

Just a guess:

For better or worse, the White House may have decided that the "bloodbath" play was a loser. More broadly, this may mean that the White House, and their cable news messengers, may have decided that the time has come to stop treating Acyn Torabi like the world's most insightful political strategist.

Our impression would be this:

Donald J. Trump has been conning people his whole life, and he's really quite good at it. He knows what kinds of claims he can sell. Also, he knows how to turn gong-show attacks on his choices of words into political assets.

He seems to think that the "bloodbath" fandango turned out to be a political asset. If so, we'll guess that his judgment is correct, and that Acyn's initial judgment was perhaps miscast.

For four hours today, Morning Joe just let "bloodbath" go! The word wasn't spoken even once. You could score it a technical knockout.

In our view, the situation at the border is astoundingly bad for Biden. We were glad to see Jim Messina say as much on today's Morning Joe.

In our view, the border as it currently stands is astoundingly bad for President Biden's prospects. Quite possibly, so are the sometimes dishonest attempts to beat Trump at his own games.

Also from those data: As you can see from the WSJ data, 48% of respondents said that Trump was "best able to handle the mental and physical fitness needed to be president."

Twenty-eight percent said that Biden was "best able." In response to a somewhat murky set of choices, twenty percent said that neither candidate was "best able." 

Two percent said they didn't know. Three percent said that Biden and Trump were equal. Those numbers may have nothing to do with where this goes in the end.

Also this, for whatever it's worth:

Forty-seven percent of respondents said that they were male. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they were female.

One percent refused to answer. Only two respondents across the seven states—that worked out to zero percent—went with some version of "Other."

(In our view, all such answers are good and decent and are presumably godly. Unless you're watching Fox & Friends Weekend, where "paganism" quickly jumps in.)