DONALD TRUMP has gone further off the deep end than ever with declarations he made this weekend and by changing long-held positions he has held in exchange for huge cash handouts from a variety of billionaires.
 
“Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath,” Trump declared at a March 16 campaign rally in Vandalia, Ohio, a Dayton suburb, for Republican US Senate hopeful Bernie Moreno, a right-wing Trumpite corporate executive who Trump endorsed for the nomination in the upcoming GOP primary.
 
“That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country … I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country, if we don’t win this election … certainly not an election that’s meaningful,” Trump continued.
 
What Trump didn’t say is that what he predicts if he loses is what analysts and political scientists say — looking at Trump’s plans for “Project 2025” and comments from key advisers — will occur if he wins: A bloodbath of revenge against Trump political enemies and a trashing of the US constitution, especially on elections.
 
Trump laced his speech with flaming rhetoric and outright lies. One prime one: Stirring up hatred of Muslims by repeating his canard about “Barack Hussein Obama,” implying his predecessor is a Muslim.
 
“You know what’s interesting? Joe Biden won against Barack Hussein Obama. Has anyone ever heard of him? Every swing state, Biden beat Obama but in every other state, he got killed,” Trump also told the Vandalia, Ohio crowd.
 
Trump’s bloodbath comment produced immediate pushback, from Trump’s own former vice president, Mike Pence, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and from Biden, who beat Trump in the 2020 run for the White House.
 
Pence pointed out that Trump incited the fatal January 6 2021, Trumpite invasion, insurrection, and coup d’etat try at the US Capitol to stop the electoral vote count that confirmed Biden’s victory the previous November.
 
The insurrectionists also erected a hangman’s noose on the Capitol lawn and hunted, unsuccessfully, for Pence and Pelosi, who police hustled away to secure sites. They chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” after Pence refused to nullify Biden’s wins in Electoral College swing states, and yelled “Where’s Nancy?” as they roamed the Capitol’s corridors, brandishing weapons and a Confederate flag.
 
Five police officers died as a result of the invasion. In the same Vandalia, Ohio, speech, Trump called jailed invaders “hostages.” He’s previously called them “patriots” and vowed, when elected, to pardon them all on his first day in office. Still, despite his criticism, Pence said he’ll vote for neither Biden nor Trump this fall.
 
But given the Trumpites’ fanaticism, shown that January day, Trump may be right in predicting another bloodbath if he loses this election, too, to Biden. Both now have enough convention delegates to be their parties’ nominees this year.
 
Biden had his own take on Trump’s comments, though as usual, he didn’t use Trump’s name.
 
Speaking at the Gridiron Club dinner — an annual “roast” of politicians by “Establishment” journalists where politicians usually give humour-filled speeches — Biden drew laughs at Trump before turning serious.
 
“Of course, the big news this week is two candidates clinched their parties’ nomination for president. One candidate is too old and mentally unfit to be president. The other is me,” Biden said.
 
“Look, I’m running against the same guy that I beat in 2020. But don’t tell him. He thinks he’s running against Barack Obama. That’s what he said,” to more laughter. Biden, of course, was Obama’s VP.
 
“In the coming months, [Vice President Kamala Harris] and I will be making the case how Americans are better off than four years ago, how we got so much through the pandemic, turned around the economy, re-established the US’s leadership in the world. All without encouraging the US people to inject bleach,” referencing one of Trump’s recommended cures for the coronavirus.
 
“All without destroying the economy, embarrassing us around the world, or itching for insurrection.”
 
Pence denounced Trump’s characterisation of the invaders as hostages.
 
“We just have to win this election, because he’s even predicting a bloodbath,” Pelosi said. “What does that mean, he’s going to exact a bloodbath? There’s something wrong here.” Reiterating her respect for all US citizens “and their goodness,” Pelosi asked: “How much more do they have to see from him to understand that this isn’t what our country is about?”
 
Trump and his top allies have also returned to using his name as a cash cow for questionable foreign deals. The latest to land in financial hot water — again — is Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
 
Kushner received a free 99-year lease from the Serbian government on vacant land in Belgrade, the capital, to build a $500 million combination hotel-apartment-museum complex on land that is now a public memorial, the New York Tunes reported after receiving a copy of the lease.
 
The site was the Serbian Ministry of Defence, destroyed by Nato bombing during the Serbian-Bosnian war in 1999. Serbia would get 22 per cent of the profits from the project. Serbian opposition parliamentarians denounced the Kushner deal as violating the memory of people slaughtered in the Nato bombing. A check of websites of good-government and public-interest groups in DC produced no reaction yet to Kushner’s freebie Serbian lease deal.
 
“The concern is the Serbian government may attempt to influence a future President Trump by enriching the president’s family,” Washington University law and ethics Professor Kathleen Clark told The Times. “Foreign policy toward Serbia should be influenced by what is in the US” interests, not any financial favours coming from the Serbian government.”
 
That’s also a Trump pattern. When the Federal General Services Administration gave Trump’s real estate company a lease on DC’s old Post Office building just blocks from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, he turned it into a money-losing luxury hotel. The lease was challenged in court, unsuccessfully, as both a sweetheart deal and a violation of the US Constitution.
 
Hotel clients included Republican bigwigs, party and rightwingers’ meetings, and foreign governments eager to curry favour with the Trump regime, despite average room prices of $800 nightly. After Trump left the White House, his company unloaded the hotel.
 
Kushner’s Serbian deal is on top of the $2 billion in “seed money” that Kushner’s investment firm set up while he was in the White House. He got the money from Saudi dictator Mohammed bin Salman. The money was channelled to Kushner via the Salman-controlled Saudi sovereign investment fund, financed by oil revenues.
 
Trump, meanwhile, has already more than confirmed that a second Trump administration will, in addition to ushering in a fascistic nightmare, become a cash cow for him.
 
Already he is selling positions on major issues to the highest bidder for those willing to take the chance that he will be elected.
 
For years Trump joined rightwingers in calling for a boycott of Bud Light, one of the nation’s iconic beers after the company ran ads that the right wing said endorsed the LGBTQ lifestyle. When a top executive of the company recently threw a $16,000 a plate fundraiser for Trump, who is using all those campaign funds to pay his legal bills, Trump said the company deserved a “second chance” and he reversed his support for the boycott.
 
When Trump was president he called for the banning of TikTok but again, when a top shareholder in that company promised him billions of dollars for his legal defence fund he reversed that position too. He is now calling for an end to attacks on the social media giant.
 
During the Republican primaries, he attacked his GOP opponents for favouring cuts to social security and Medicare. Following other contributions from wealthy rightwingers he is now saying that he will “look into” how social security and Medicare can be cut.
 
You can almost hear the ringing of an old-fashioned cash register followed by the popping open of the cash draw and the placement into it of more money by Trump as he cashes in during a second Trump administration. Each time he rings up the money, another wealthy lobbyist gets Trump’s support for another issue they hold near and dear. The cash register is already ringing out of control.

This article appeared on Peoplesworld.org.