Has Donald J. Trump been setting out bait?

THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2024

No bait left behind: Has Candidate Donald J. Trump perhaps been using his words?

In Tuesday's speech in Michigan, he began flashing "blood bath" again, deliberately giving the term new, additional weight. 

Along the way, he also offered the statement shown below. He was speaking about two young women who have been murdered by unauthorized or semi-unauthorized migrants:

TRUMP (4/2/24): Just a few weeks ago, I met with the grieving family of Laken Riley. You know Laken, she was incredible. Top of her class. Everything was the top. She was the top of everything. She was incredible. I met the parents, incredible people.

The 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia who was barbarically murdered by an illegal alien animal. 

The Democrats say, "Please don’t call them animals, they're humans."

I said, "No, they’re not humans, they're not humans. They’re animals."

Nancy Pelosi told me that. She said, "Please don't use the word 'animals,' sir, when you're talking about these people. 

I said, "I'll use the word 'animal' because that's what they are."

I'll never forget my vow to her wonderful mother, father and sister, two weeks ago. I said, "I will deliver justice for Laken." 

I said that, and now today, I'm adding something. It's going to be for Laken, and it's also justice for Ruby. 

We're going to deliver justice for Ruby.  We're going to watch what happens with this thug. We're going to watch what happens. And we have all the law enforcement behind. They're going to watch what happens to this thug. He's not going to get away with it.

Trump continued from there. "Ruby" is Ruby Garcia, a young Michigan woman whose murder Trump had already discussed at some length. 

You can watch his entire speech by clicking here. Or you can let a bunch of unimpressive journalists tell you what he said.

We'll start with several observations:

First, we have no idea whether Nancy Pelosi ever said anything like that to Trump. Also, we ourselves don't use the term "animal" to refer to a person. 

(We even complained when mainstream journos aped Jacob Weisberg, who had written that Candidate Gore came across like "some sort of feral animal who had been locked in a small cage" at his first debate with Bill Bradley. We noted that this is one of the ways we can dehumanize the people we choose to oppose.)

For the record, we can even remember when President Obama got criticized for calling some criminals "thugs!" (We wouldn't use that term either.)

That said, several questions arise:

First question: Was Trump saying that all migrants, or perhaps all unauthorized migrants, are "animals?" (And "thugs?") Or was he referring only to those who commit vicious murders?

Second question: Was Trump just setting out bait? Was he again employing language for which he knew he'd be criticized, but doing so in a way where he could claim—where he could fairly reasonably claim—that the liberals and the "fake news" media were misrepresenting his statements again?

Is Candidate Trump clever enough to lay out that kind of bait? We can't answer that question, but if he is, he can be sure of this one fact:

If he lays out such bait for our team to take, there will be No Bait Left Behind!

Uniformly, Trump's remarks have been edited and paraphrased in such a way as to make it sound like he was calling all migrants "animals. As with many things this candidate says, it isn't perfectly clear what precisely he meant. But it certainly isn't clear that he should be represented as having said that.

Was the candidate laying out bait? Surely, he knows the rule by which our blue team proceeds. Also, he's been a con man his entire life. He's much better at playing this game than our unimpressive pseudo-journalists are.

No Bait Left Behind! 

Ever since his early remarks about John McCain, it's been the rule by which our blue team has elected to proceed.

Our team is highly unimpressive, profoundly unskilled. It isn't clear that the candidate isn't beating us at his own game every time!

Final point: As a general matter, speaking up for innocent people who get murdered is extremely good politics. Incredibly, we blues don't seem to understand that fact at this dangerous point in time.

Why not also this: To recall the way that first Gore-Bradley debate was covered, here's the link to the late Eric Boehlert's report for Salon. 

More precisely, that's the way this debate was covered by the propaganda-inclined mainstream journalists whose assessments, judgments and intentions we unwisely place our trust.