‘Plays Out Perfectly For Donald Trump’: Dan Abrams Slams Media’s ‘Breathless’ Coverage of ‘Bloodbath’ Comments
NewsNation host and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams took the media to task for their coverage of Donald Trump’s “bloodbath” remark and said their “over-the-top” reaction played right into the former president’s hands.
Abrams spent a segment of his NewsNation show on Monday criticizing liberals and the media for taking Trump’s comments at an Ohio rally out of context and fixating on “bloodbath” without reporting on the context of his comments to sound the alarm on Trump:
He’s talking about it in the context of cars, right? Is it a great idea to be using phrases like “bloodbath” considering what happened on January 6th? No. But do I think he’s calling for another January 6th-type event there, as many in the media have been claiming? No. The context matters. Right out of the gate, the word “bloodbath” blew up in the media. The Trump campaign put out a statement repeating it was talking about the automobile industry in China, but the left-leaning media dug in.
Even more than the media taking Trump’s comments out of context, Abrams argued the coverage gave Trump and his campaign ammunition:
This plays out perfectly for Donald Trump. He gets to say, rightly, the media took his comments out of context and the rest of his speech gets largely forgotten.
After playing a montage of coverage from outlets including CNN and MSNBC, Abrams then pointed out an actually egregious part of the same Trump speech that got little to no coverage at all, when he referred to those convicted for crimes related to the January 6 insurrection “hostages” (again). These were Trump’s comments at the same Ohio rally on Saturday:
Can you see this spirit from the hostages? And that’s what they are, is hostages. They’ve been treated terribly and very unfairly, and you know that, and everybody knows that. And we’re going to be working on that soon. The first day we get into office, we’re going to save our country, we’re going to work with the people to treat those unbelievable patriots. And they were unbelievable patriots and are.
Abrams cited that comment and others from the rally as far more troubling than the “bloodbath” remark — and argued the time and attention the media devoted to bloodbath-gate would have been better spent focusing on some of those other statements.
See, look, what that really is, is an attack on the American justice system where defendants have pled guilty and juries have convicted, right? Juries. Where cops were harmed and an important government building was destroyed and defaced — they’re “hostages.” Or, as we discussed last week, the fact that Trump is calling for the prosecution of Nevada election officials who were just doing their jobs based on false claims of voter fraud that have been repeatedly debunked.
Again, as someone who regularly defends our legal system from our Supreme Court to law enforcement, this is the stuff that crosses a line for me, threatening to use the power of the government to prosecute people you don’t like. Today he called for the prosecution of his former aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, for testifying before the January 6th Committee. Previously, he’s talked about prosecuting members of the January 6th Committee.
Look, I’m less interested in the comments that he makes about how horrible things are going to be if he’s not elected than I am in comments that he makes about what he will do if he is. And by the way, same thing applies to [President Joe Biden]. “End of democracy,” if he isn’t elected, is less meaningful than what happens if he is elected. But the liberal media’s breathless and over-the-top coverage is focused on that single word taken out of context as a sort of “gotcha” sensational moment.
Watch the video above via NewsNation.
