Don't miss how the media insult your intelligence: Bloodbath for me, but not for thee

Make no mistake about it: The corporate media's latest stunt misrepresenting Donald Trump is an overt insult to your intelligence.

At a campaign rally in Ohio last week, Trump dared utter the word "bloodbath." Regardless of the economic context in which Trump used the word — referring to the auto industry and jobs and what he believes will happen economically if he loses the 2024 election — the legacy media suggested in near-unison that Trump was threatening political violence.

But he wasn't, and the media know that.

Yet pearl-clutching journalists and opportunist Democrats pushed the claim anyway, which raises the question: Was this an instance of media malpractice or something more sinister?

That the media pushed an easily disprovable narrative suggests they do not believe Americans are capable of accessing or even understanding the wider context of Trump's remarks. Even worse, their insistence that Trump was threatening political violence suggests they do not believe that Americans, most of whom are native English speakers, intuitively understand the semantic range of the word "bloodbath." Finally, using headlines to push their narrative suggests they believe Americans are easily manipulated and will believe whatever their headlines say.

In sum: The media pushing a unified narrative about Trump's use of the word "bloodbath" suggests they believe you are too stupid to realize Trump was not threatening political violence.

The media also conveniently ignore the fact that Trump did use "bloodbath" in a way the dictionary allows, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow recently used the word "bloodbath" on air, and President Joe Biden himself has used "bloodbath" before, too. Where was the outrage then?

Ironically, the media are only helping Trump and hurting themselves.

Aside from the fact that Americans most care about their pocketbooks, the education of their children, and the safety of their communities — not Trump's campaign-rally rhetoric — the media's latest lie about Trump only further erodes their relationship with the American people. It's no wonder, then, why the public trust in the legacy media remains near record lows.

Importantly, the journalistic sin here is not only what the media did, but what they didn't do.

Interpreting Donald Trump in the worst way possible — granting him not even a hint of charity — is one problem. But it's a totally different problem that the media refused to interact with the substance of Trump's speech, which included his seeming endorsement of a 100% tariff on Chinese-manufactured vehicles.

Reporting on and offering analysis of that policy is the job of the media, and they failed to meet their task. The end result is that voters are left less informed and without the necessary context to help them analyze whether that policy would be wise or disastrous for American interests.

At National Review, Jeff Blehar perfectly sums up the problem and what happened here:

[The media] really just can’t help themselves on a fundamental level, can they? A school of like-minded fish smelled “bloodbath” in the water and the feeding frenzy began. It will be forgotten tomorrow. But the problem is that the media aren’t feeding on Trump, as they seem to believe; they’re feeding on themselves, eating away at their reputations and ability to persuade. Each such example makes whatever it is that they think they’re doing — advocating Biden’s reelection or, I don’t know, just reporting the truth without an obviously partisan slant — less possible. When journalists lament about the death of public trust in their profession, what they fail to understand is that it wasn’t a murder. It was a suicide — and a death by a thousand cuts, at that.

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