"Garbage" vs "Bloodbath"
No Wonder only 18% of Republicans Trust the Media
By Chuck Warren
In March, Donald Trump gave a speech to the car industry. For a day, the entire mainstream media tried to convince us that he said there would be violence in the country if he didn’t get elected. The same people are now trying to convince us that Joe Biden didn’t call Trump supporters garbage. Let’s compare what each of them said.
This is what Trump said:
“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% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, 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 going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars.”
Trump obviously used a metaphor about how the auto industry would be hurt. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, bloodbath also means “major economic disaster.” When you read the transcripts of Trump’s speech, he’s obviously talking in the context of economics.
His previous sentence is bragging that manufacturers won’t be able to sell cars made by non-Americans if he’s elected. Then he contrasts that with what would happen if he doesn’t get elected, which is terrible economic conditions for the whole country, which he calls a bloodbath.
Now, this is what Biden said:
The only garbage I see floating out there is his (Trump’s) supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American.
But some are insisting that this is how we should read Biden’s remark:
The only garbage I see floating out there is his (Trump’s) supporter’s—his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American.
The first one is a full and coherent sentence, and a second full sentence follows it. In the second reading, Biden stops mid-sentence and starts a new sentence. The problem with the second interpretation is that nobody refers to a specific person in that context as “his supporter.” You’d call him “the comedian” or “the speaker” or something specific like that, instead of using a general word that could apply to anyone. That’s not how language works, and that’s not how people speak.
There’s a second and more important explanation: Occam’s razor! The simplest explanation is usually the best one. And the simplest explanation is that Biden abhors Trump voters and thinks they are garbage. So he said what he has always thought and called them garbage.
Any fair person would admit that Trump meant that the economy would get even worse if he doesn’t get elected, and Biden meant to insult Trump voters. But there are some who might want to extend the benefit of the doubt to both and argue that neither meant what they said in a bad way.
But most media people went out of their way to take what Trump said out of context. Now, the same journalists are trying to be the most charitable to Biden.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
The other issue with what the comedian said (I don't recall his name, and I'm too tired to find it), "There's an island of garbage floating around...call[ed} Puerto Rico." At this time, Puerto Rico is having a garbage crisis;. It was obviously a statement about that. It could not be interpreted by a sane person as a statement that the people of Puerto Rico are garbage; he didn't say anything about people. It was Joke Biden, and only Joke Biden, who talked about people being garbage.