Former President Donald J. Trump on Monday sought to defend his declaration over the weekend that the nation would face a “blood bath” if he misplaced in November, saying — as his marketing campaign had beforehand — that he had been referring solely to the auto business.

“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,” he wrote on his social media platform.

He made the remarks in a speech in Ohio on Saturday, delivered on behalf of Bernie Moreno, whom he has endorsed in Tuesday’s Republican Senate major. After vowing to impose tariffs on automobiles manufactured outdoors the United States, he then mentioned: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”

President Biden’s re-election marketing campaign responded in a press release that Mr. Trump was “a loser who gets beat by over seven million votes and then, instead of appealing to a wider mainstream audience, doubles down on his threats of political violence.”

In the identical speech, Mr. Trump referred to as migrants “animals” and “not people, in my opinion”; described folks convicted in reference to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol as “hostages”; and instructed that American democracy would finish if he misplaced. “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful,” he mentioned.

The subsequent morning, Fox News broadcast an interview with Mr. Trump wherein he repeated his past assertions that migrants have been “poisoning the blood” of the nation.

Mr. Trump on Monday adopted up his social media publish defending his remarks with an all-caps message: “Our once great country is going down the drain. We are a nation in decline! Vote for Trump, what the hell do you have to lose?”