“Now, if I don’t get elected,” Donald Trump said at a rally last weekend in Ohio, “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.”

Who talks like that?

The once and possibly future president of the United States. Warning of a bloodbath for the country.

His defenders claim his words are being taken out of context. He was only talking about the auto industry, or so he claimed, after the fact. “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.

Trump has repeatedly warned that there would be “bedlam,” “riots,” “violence in the streets” and that “bad things will happen.” This is what he predicted if he were denied the nomination, when a court ruled against him, when Mar-a-Lago was searched, if he were criminally indicted, if he is convicted. Sloppy rhetoric or real threats? Jan. 6 certainly suggests the latter.

And that wasn’t the only dangerous rhetoric this weekend. The Dayton rally opened with an announcer asking everyone to rise in support of those who had been convicted of insurrection on Jan. 6: “Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated Jan. 6 hostages.” According to the former president, domestic terrorists, convicted criminals, are to be respected as “hostages.”

By contrast, migrants seeking asylum in this country are not even people. “I don’t know if you call them people. In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion,” Trump said. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.” It is a terrible thing to say. Calling them “animals,” as Trump did on Saturday, is horribly offensive. So is saying, with echoes of Adolf Hitler, that they are poisoning the blood of our country. Told that he sounded like Hitler, Trump responded, “That’s what they say,” and said it again.

This is, after all, the man who reportedly told his chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, that Hitler “did some good things” and that he admired the loyalty his generals showed to him.

In an interview published on Monday, the man who admires Hitler accused Jewish Democrats of hating Israel and hating Judaism. “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Trump said. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”

How does he get away with saying these things?

Donald Trump is a dangerous man. Words have power, particularly when they are spoken by a man who could be president of the United States.

Imagine what the media would do to Joe Biden if he talked this way. They would crucify him, and rightly so.

Trump gets away with it. It’s just Trump. Yes, it’s Trump. And he believes it. And he acts on it. He very nearly undermined our democracy. He still rues his failure to succeed in doing it. He tried. He came close. And now the Republicans are setting him up to do it again.

Alarmist? Who is alarmist?

Me or the man forecasting a bloodbath? Me or the man accusing me of antisemitism? Me or the man calling desperate people animals, denying their humanity? Me or the man quoting Hitler?

This is what he says. He has shown us his cards. He has made clear that he will do what he says. It is not just rhetoric. It is a warning that we dare not ignore, and that the media is wrong to discount. He is, if nothing else, a man of his word.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.