The Media Research Center has always been a division of the Republican Party — and as the 2024 presidential election draws closer, it has made clear that it’s a division of the Trump campaign as well. Jorge Bonilla wrote like he was on the Trump payroll in a March 17 post:
By “surprise”, of course I mean none whatsoever. Once again, the media have taken a quote from former President Donald Trump, stripped it of context, and forwarded a false narrative. In this case, the media took Trump’s threat of 100% tariffs against Chinese electric cars manufactured in Mexico, and falsely turned it into a threat of political violence unless he is elected. Ergo, The Bloodbath Hoax.
But it wasn’t a hoax — Trump indisputably said “bloodbath.” The only question was one of context. Bonilla continued to create his narrative:
What Trump said was actually quite clear, as he discussed the potential economic calamity to the domestic automotive industry from unfettered Chinese electric cars manufactured in Mexico:
[…]But the Biden campaign and the media combined to push just the 9 seconds where Trump says, “now, If I don’t get elected, that’s going to be the least of it. It’ll be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it.” Team Biden pushed it to the media, and the media ran with it throughout Saturday night.
Enter the Sunday Shows. Each show, in their own way, promoted and forwarded the Sunday Hoax.
Bonilla didn’t want to discuss the fact that Trump saying “that’s going to be the least of it” is a sign that, as others have noted, it’s entirely plausible to assume that Trump was talking about something larger than tariffs. Further, Trump has a long history of using inflammatory and violent language in making political remarks, so there’s no real reason to define his words as narrowly as Bonilla demands that we do.
But Bonilla is not interested in a reasonable discussion about context — never mind, of course, that the MRC cares about context only when conservatives look bad over it and has its own history of taking people out of context to peddle a desired narrative. His job here was to manufacture a talking point for the Trump campaign. He repeated that talking point in another March 17 post: “Despite clear, documented context to the contrary, ABC continues to push the discredited piece of Biden campaign propaganda known as the Bloodbath Hoax, and ties it to the Capitol Riot.” He added:
ABC’s furtherance of The Bloodbath Hoax is a most vivid example of the willingness of the corporate media to misinform its public in furtherance of a partisan political agenda- a pursuit to which the truth is secondary.
As if Bonilla isn’t pushing a partisan political agenda by grossly overreacting to something for Trump’s benefit. Soon enough, Bonilla’s fellow right-wingers and even Trump himself was spouting off about the “bloodbath hoax” — we hope he paid Bonilla a bonus for coining that phrase for his benefit. Of course, the real reason Bonilla worked so hard to push his narrative is entirely for Trump’s benefit, as Brian Stelter noted: “The word ‘hoax is meant to shut down debate and critical thinking. After all, there’s no use in analyzing or critiquing something that’s a ‘hoax.’ We might as well just move on and forget Trump ever said ‘bloodbath’ at all, right?”
Having gotten all the right people to latch onto to something it created, the MRC hammered its overblown controversy — and its hypocritical concerns about context — over the next few days:
- Nets Pitch Hissy Fits Over Trump’s ‘Controversial’, ‘Incendiary’ ‘Bloodbath’ Comment
- The View Defends Media’s Trump ‘Bloodbath’ Hoax, Claims It’s in Context
- The Networks Still Pushing The Bloodbath Hoax, Now Wrapped Around January 6th
- Kimmel Attacks Fox For Putting Trump in Context, Says It Doesn’t Matter
- CNN’s Fake News Jim Convenes Legion of Dumb to Decry Trump’s ‘Bloodbath’ Line
- ESPN Host Condemns Fabricated ‘Bloodbath’ Outrage: Trump ‘Is Whipping Y’all A**’
- PBS Blows ‘Bloodbath’: ‘Latest Example of Donald Trump Using Violent Rhetoric’
Bonilla even got to be a guest on his boss Tim Graham’s March 18 podcast, where he “recount[ed] just how this speech was wrenched out of context on the Sunday morning and evening ‘news shows.” We presume Bonilla and Graham didn’t talk much about their own flip-flops on context.
Jeffrey Lord served up a conspiracy theory about all this in his March 23 column:
But conservatives suspected that the liberal media did not simply “miss the full context” of his words. The media, it was suspected, was quite deliberately trying to portray Trump as advocating violence in the streets. A “bloodbath” if he did not win. And saying this to slam Trump.
This, of course, follows on the heels of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. A media manufactured “scandal” that dogged Trump through most of his term in the White House.
Both of which, individually not to mention collectively, has painted a portrait of the media as so determined to take down Trump that they will say and do anything – make that print or broadcast anything – that targets Trump.
The problem here is that in doing this the media has effectively targeted …. its own credibility.
As if the MRC hasn’t done the same by giving up all pretense of “media research” to sign on as Trump campaign hacks. It already has had to correct dozens of posts after an alleged informant on Hunter Biden was found to be a liar — but it has yet to confess this to its readers, lest it actually admit to its hackery.
Meanwhile, weeks later, Bonilla was still desperately flogging his narrative. He whined in a May 3 post:
ABC World News Tonight, far and away the most fervent propagator of Biden talking points, farted out an embarrassment of a report that served little purpose other than to attempt to rekindle January 6th fearmongering and rehash the broadly-debunked “Bloodbath Hoax”.
No nuance, no attempt at serious discussion — just dishonest hammering of a Trump-approved (and Trump-paid?) talking point.