Former President Donald Trump’s declaration that if his second attempt at securing a second term in the White House fails then it will result in a “bloodbath” was taken entirely out of context by the Biden team and the media, according to his campaign.

Trump was speaking from an airfield in Dayton, Ohio on Saturday during a rally in support of Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, when the former president seemed to suggest another electoral loss would lead to widespread violence in the United States.

“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,” Trump said.

President Biden’s campaign was quick to call out the 45th president’s rhetoric, declaring Trump’s statements a further piece of evidence that his public cozying up to authoritarians like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is not just politics as usual, but a sign of his own authoritarian leanings.

“This is who Donald Trump is: a loser who gets beat by over 7 million votes and then instead of appealing to a wider mainstream audience doubles down on his threats of political violence,” Biden-Harris spokesperson James Singer said in a statement.

It’s clear this guy wants another January 6.

But the American people are going to give him another resounding electoral defeat this November. https://t.co/saukB6Wjry

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 17, 2024

Trump’s weekend comments risk a repeat of the days leading up to his exit from the White House in 2021, Singer said.

“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,” he said.

According to Trump’s campaign, the “bloodbath” comment is being taken out of context from a larger speech. The former president was not indicating any sort of violence, they say, but was instead referring to the impact Chinese auto manufacturing will have on U.S industry and job markets, his team said.

Trump’s remarks, according to a transcript of his speech, do indeed seem to be directed at Chinese President Xi Jinping over his administration’s apparent intentions to build Chinese cars in Mexico to U.S. standards and aimed toward American buyers.

“Those big monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now and you think you’re going to get that, you’re going to not hire Americans and you’re going to sell the cars to us? No. We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars,” Trump said just before the “bloodbath” comments.

The transcript proves the Biden campaign is grasping at straws, according to Trump’s team.

“Joe Biden is allowing China to take over the car industry and Americans are being laid off left and right. It is an economic disaster that only President Donald Trump can turn around,” Make America Great Again Inc. Spokesman Alex Pfeiffer said in a statement.

Trump’s campaign went on to point out that Merriam-Webster’s dictionary says that a bloodbath, in addition to the straight-forward somewhat biblical-sounding connotations of its primary definition, also can be taken to mean “a major economic disaster.”

In other presidential politics news, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the black-sheep scion to the once-powerful Kennedy family political operation, is expected to announce his running mate later this week. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and noted vaccine skeptic, has floated New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rogers and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura as potential Vice Presidential picks.

However, according to reporting by Mediaite, Kennedy will use his Thursday announcement in California to add Nicole Shanahan, a wealthy West Coast attorney and entrepreneur who was once married to Google’s Sergey Brinn, to his long shot bid for the White House.