Trump's 'bloodbath' comments in Ohio downplayed by campaign

Former President Trump pointing into crowd outdoors as some hold American flags

By MEG KINNARD and JILL COLVIN

March 16, 2024 Updated 9:13 PM PT

VANDALIA, Ohio — Former President Trump warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses in November, and claimed that he — not President Biden — will protect Social Security, as he campaigned for Senate candidate Bernie Moreno in Ohio.

Trump, speaking Saturday on a wind-whipped airfield outside Dayton, praised his chosen candidate in the Senate race as an “‘America first’ champion” and a “political outsider who has spent his entire life building up Ohio communities.”

“He’s going to be a warrior in Washington,” Trump said, days after securing enough delegates to clinch the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Moreno faces Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Sen. Matt Dolan in Tuesday’s GOP primary. LaRose and Moreno have aligned themselves with the pro-Trump faction of the party, while Dolan is backed by more establishment Republicans, including Gov. Mike DeWine and former Sen. Rob Portman.

Saturday’s rally was hosted by Buckeye Values PAC, a group backing Moreno’s candidacy. But Trump used the stage to deliver a profanity-filled version of his usual rally speech that again painted an apocalyptic picture of the country under a second Biden term.

“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,” he warned while talking about offshoring’s impact on the U.S. auto industry and his plans to increase tariffs on foreign-made cars.

Later, Trump said: “If this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country.”

Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer accused Trump of doubling “down on his threats of political violence.”

“He wants another January 6, but the American people are going to give him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence, and his thirst for revenge,” Singer said in a statement.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said that Trump was clearly talking about the impact a second Biden term would have on the auto industry and the broader economy.

“Crooked Joe Biden and his campaign are engaging in deceptively, out-of-context editing,” he said.

Trump repeatedly noted his difficulty reading from the teleprompters, which were whipped by 35-mile-per-hour gusts.

Moreno, a wealthy Cleveland businessman and onetime Trump critic, supported Marco Rubio for president in the 2016 Republican primary.

In 2021, NBC News reported on an email exchange from around the time of Trump’s first presidential run in which Moreno referred to him as a “lunatic” and a “maniac.”

On Saturday, however, Moreno praised Trump as a “great American” and railed against those in his party who have been critical of the former president, who this week became the GOP’s presumptive nominee for a third straight election.

“I am so sick and tired of Republicans that say, ‘I support President Trump’s policies, but I don’t like the man,’ ” Moreno said as he joined Trump on stage.

Trump, meanwhile, dismissed recent allegations against Moreno, likening them to some of his own challenges through the years, including the criminal indictments he is facing.

Trump has been charged in four cases, including over his handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his loss to Biden in the 2020 election.

“He’s getting some very tough Democrat fake treatment right now,” Trump said. “And we’re not going to stand for it.”

The Associated Press reported Thursday that in 2008, someone with access to Moreno’s work email account created a profile on an adult website seeking “Men for 1-on-1 sex.” The AP could not confirm that it was created by Moreno himself.

Moreno’s lawyer said the account was created by a former intern, Dan Ricci, and provided a statement in which Ricci said he created it as “part of a juvenile prank.”

Questions about the profile have circulated in GOP circles for the last month, sparking frustration among senior Republican operatives about Moreno’s potential vulnerability in a general election, according to seven people who are directly familiar with conversations about how to address the matter. The sources requested anonymity to avoid running afoul of Trump and his allies.

Trump, in his remarks in Ohio, also accused Biden of posing a threat to Social Security — a continuation of the Republican’s efforts to control the damage from his comments in an interview this week in which he appeared to voice openness to cuts.

“Your Social Security is going to be gone,” he warned of a Biden second term, even though the president has pledged to protect and strengthen Social Security as it faces a projected budget shortfall.

“You will not be able to have Social Security with this guy in office, because he’s destroying the economics of our country,” Trump continued. “And that includes Medicare, by the way, and American seniors are going to be in big trouble.

“I made a promise that I will always keep Social Security, Medicare. We always will keep it. We never will cut it,” he said.

The comments came after Trump, in an interview with CNBC, answered a question about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid by saying, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements — tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.”

Trump continued to criticize Biden over his handling of the border and the influx of migrants. He also laced into Dolan, calling him a “weak RINO” — a Republican in name only — and accused him of “trying to become the next Mitt Romney.”

He also criticized the Dolan family, which owns Cleveland’s baseball team, for changing its name from the Indians to the Guardians.

Trump was joined at the rally by Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who have campaigned with Moreno and are considered potential vice presidential candidates.

Trump’s decision to back Moreno marked a major blow to LaRose, who had taken steps to win his favor. Just days after entering the Senate race, LaRose endorsed Trump for president — reversing an earlier stance that the state’s elections chief should remain politically neutral. The next month, he fired a longtime trusted aide after old tweets surfaced in which the staffer criticized Trump.

The winner of Tuesday’s primary will face third-term Sen. Sherrod Brown, viewed as among the nation’s most vulnerable Democrats, in November.

Brown, first elected in 2006 and uncontested in his primary this year, has managed to keep his seat even as the state has shifted to the right. In his most recent reelection, in 2018, he defeated then-Rep. Jim Renacci by almost 7 percentage points.

Two years later, Ohio voted for then-President Trump by 8 points.

Kinnard and Colvin write for the Associated Press. Colvin reported from New York. AP writer Brian Slodysko contributed to this report.