NEW: 40% of Americans believe Trump was talking about need for political violence with ‘bloodbath’ comment: Rasmussen Reports poll

During a weekend speech in Ohio, Trump spoke on the American automobile industry and the economic disaster that could occur if he’s not elected. Liberal outlets and pundits distorted his comments and took the line out of context, saying that it was a threat against the nation.

The poll, conducted by Rasmussen Reports, found that 60 percent of US likely voters agreed with the statement that the media is "truly the enemy of the people." This is up one point from May, in which 59 percent of US likely voters agreed with the statement.

49 percent of likely voters said they believe Trump was in fact talking about auto workers losing jobs in relation to the "bloodbath comment," while 40 percent said they believe he was talking about "widespread political violence by his supporters if he did not win the election." An additional 11 percent were unsure.

The poll was conducted between March 18 and 20 of 1,114 likely US voters and has a margin of error of 3 percent.

Leading up to the "bloodbath" comment, Trump said at the Ohio rally, “If you’re listening, President XI … 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 now we’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those guys if I get elected.”

Trump continued, “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."

The Biden-Harris HQ X account, the official account of the Biden-Harris campaign, cut the clip to just Trump’s "bloodbath" line, cutting out the context of the statement.

A further statement from the campaign stated that "Donald Trump continues to praise dictators, promise to pardon political violence, and launch racist attacks against Black and brown Americans."

Speaking on CNN, Rep Nancy Pelosi said, "We just have to win this election because he's even predicting a bloodbath. What does that mean? He's going to exact a bloodbath? There's something wrong here. How respectful I am of the American people and their goodness. But how much more do they have to see from him to understand that this isn't what our country is about."

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said, "He's talking about a bloodbath for America. It's laid out in the terms of it, and these idiots on Twitter, these idiots on cable news, these idiots on Sunday shows."

"Let me say that at 6:15 am, it's just bullsh*t. He knew what he was doing, we're not stupid, Americans aren't stupid. He was talking about a bloodbath. Sometimes a bloodbath means a bloodbath." He further suggested that the comments were about violence and not economics in the country because Trump said the auto industry bloodbath would be the "least of it."

In response to the media’s coverage of the comment, Trump wrote in a statement, "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."