Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s the same cycle virtually every time Donald Trump says something provocative. Trump opines off the cuff with colorful, metaphorical, and often hyperbolic language meant to tap into voter sentiment and to get attention, after which Democrats and the media strain to take him literally and howl with feigned outrage as if they didn’t understand what he actually meant.

Here we go again.

Yesterday, we briefly covered the context of Trump’s full quote. Speaking to an Ohio crowd about predatory Chinese trade practices, Trump said:

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 … 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 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.

His point is dead simple: Unless Trump is elected to stop it, American carmakers are going to suffer as a result of Chinese practices and Biden’s failures.

Yet, as predictably as the sun rising in the east, Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists seized on the word “bloodbath” to pretend that, if Trump loses the November election, he’ll incite violence. It’s part of a concerted strategy to keep January 6 at the forefront, even though the only real bloodshed that day was that of Ashley Babbitt at the hands of a Capitol Police officer.

“It’s clear this guy wants another January 6,” tweeted Joe Biden’s social media people with a strategically truncated video of Trump’s comments.

It’s clear this guy wants another January 6.

But the American people are going to give him another resounding electoral defeat this November. https://t.co/saukB6Wjry

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 17, 2024

“He’s even predicting a ‘bloodbath,’” asserted Nancy Pelosi. “What does that mean? He’s going to exact a bloodbath?”

“He was talking about a bloodbath,” huffed MSBNC’s Joe Scarborough. “Sometimes a bloodbath means a bloodbath.”

“Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses,” headlined The New York Times.

An NBC News headline blared, “Trump says there will be a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses the election.”

Leftmedia talkingheads fretted over the return of 1930s German fascism and genocide. NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss said, “That’s how fascism and totalitarianism and — in Germany’s case — the Holocaust came to Germany, which had been a country where there were big institutions of democracy until, as you well know, the early 1930s.” (Germany was primarily a monarchy until 1918, but whatever.)

Likewise, Politico’s Michael Kruse wrote a lengthy article about how Trump’s humor is essentially the same as Adolf Hitler: “Trump is not Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini. But they share a rhetorical style, experts say.”

You get the idea.

“The word ‘bloodbath’ is used in common parlance all the time,” noted veteran journalist Brit Hume, “and it doesn’t necessarily refer to an actual shedding of blood. It refers to some major upheaval, damage being done, and the rest of it.”

And you know something? Before Trump used the word, journalists understood that. They also used the word. A lot.

It’s almost like their indignation now is phony.

Leftists and even some on the Right who hate Donald Trump with every fiber of their being really don’t like the way Trump says things. Frankly, he is often unnecessarily uncouth, angry, visceral, and so forth. He behaves like, well, a Democrat.

Yet the things he says rightly and intentionally resonate with average Americans who are justifiably outraged at the rigged game Washington has foisted on us. Trump knows exactly what he’s saying and why, and it works. He connects.

Trump posted his rebuttal on Truth Social: “The Fake News Media, and their Democrat Partners in the destruction of our Nation, pretended to be shocked at my use of the word BLOODBATH, even though they fully understood that I was simply referring to imports allowed by Crooked Joe Biden, which are killing the automobile industry.”

“Missing context” is usually the “fact-checker” catch-all, but they’re more than happy to let this one go. In fact, The Washington Post even offered “analysis” yesterday that the “broader context” is that “Trump has already warned of ‘riots,’ ‘violence in the streets’ and ‘death & destruction’ if he’s wronged.”

You want context? Those are things Democrat constituents actually do in America’s cities.

“Many MAGA Republicans are saying Trump’s ‘bloodbath’ comment should be put in context,” the Biden-Harris HQ X account posted. “So we put it in context.”

That context included not only January 6 but the BIG lie about Trump’s “very fine people” comment about Charlottesville — the lie that supposedly motivated Biden to run in the first place.

As usual, political analyst David Harsanyi cuts to the chase: “You don’t need to be a fan of Donald Trump to concede that this weekend’s meltdown over the word ‘bloodbath’ was cynical and dishonest.” Indeed, these contrived frenzies serve a dual purpose — to drive media ratings and to motivate suburban women to vote against the meanie with the red hat.

Yes, Trump was using hyperbole. “Politicians always catastrophize events,” Harsanyi observed. Democrats are doing it now to rile up their own base.

On a final note, in case you think we were just throwing shade at Trump for behaving like a Democrat, here’s a two-minute compilation of Democrats using violent language to express their contempt for a guy who forces them to look in the mirror.

FLASHBACK: ⚠️ While the Media TWISTS Trump’s economic bloodbath comments, here is 2 minutes and 20 seconds of DEMS calling for violence..pic.twitter.com/jw7Z26VRGO

— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) March 18, 2024