THE GREAT I-AM: When The Great I-Am made his latest claim...

TUESDAY, APRIL 22, 2025

...Blue journalists ran off and hid: The propaganda starts early—then runs all through the day and the night—on Fox News Channel programs.

By far, they're the most-watched programs in all of America's "cable news!" But then again, so what?

As the propaganda streams forward on these messaging programs, the finer journalists—those who reside in Blue America—agree to avert their gaze.

This permissive behavior is general over Blue America's legacy media. As an example of the way this deferential behavior unfolds, let's start with a claim which was made on Fox & Friends this very morning, at 6:07 a.m.

The program started at 6 o'clock sharp, with three of the four friends presents. Soon, one of the friends made the statement shown below about Kilmar Abrego-Garcia/

On March 12, Abrego Garcia was renditioned (not "deported") to a Central American "prison" which is gulag-adjacent. Here's what the Fox friend said:

KILMEADE (4/22/25): One guy, who didn't get the due process that Democrats wanted, who we know is a gangster, and they're going down! (To El Salvador)

From the larger context, it's clear that he was referring to Abrego Garcia. But is Abrego Garcia "a gangster?" And do we "know" any such thing?

More to the point, does Kilmeade himself know any such thing? How about the other two friends who supported what he said?

You may remember Kilmeade's work from two earlier points in the "deportation" saga. Back at the start, he's the fellow who praised the rendition of hundreds of people to the gulag in El Salvador because we had gotten a very good price for the service—just $6 million!—from that country's "coolest dictator" president.

That's what he said at the start. Later, when Kilmeade played the tape of the young woman from Tufts being dragooned off the streets by a gang of masked men, his instant reaction was memorable:

"How great was that?" he said!

How great was that? the Fox News Channel friend enthusiastically said. Now, this same person was letting that channel's viewers know that Abrego Garcia is known to be "a gangster."

Full disclosure! You never see Brian Kilmeade discussed by major Blue American "news orgs." No one wants a fight with Fox, or so it may seem to appear.

Life is still good at the top of the heap, and it may stay that way for the next short time. Perhaps for that reason, the finer people at Blue America's orgs let the Kilmeades proceed without comment. 

With that, we return to Abrego Garcia, the alleged "gangster" concerning whom we actually know no such thing:

Last Friday evening, President Trump took the next step in pimping that propaganda. As we noted yesterday, he took to the former Twitter, now the great X, to peddle the latest claim about the man who had been renditioned to that prison—without being charged with or convicted of any crime—all the way back on March 12.

Warning! According to his niece's book, President Trump is a type of modern version of "The Great I-Am." He says what he pleases and does what he likes—and below, you see what he said and did last Friday evening.

Warning! There is no particular reason to believe that these statements on X are true. As you can see, his post included a photograph:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such “a fine and innocent person.” They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles, and two Highly Respected Courts found that he was a member of MS-13, beat up his wife, etc. I was elected to take bad people out of the United States, among other things. I must be allowed to do my job. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

There this fellow went again! Let's get clear on what he said, with a bit of background thrown in:

When he was only 11 years old, his older brother, Freddy Trump, began to mock him as "The Great I-Am." According to family history, he did so because the younger brother was already displaying the behavior which would get him shipped off to a "reform school" when he was13 years old.

Tomorrow, we'll return to Mary Trump's account of these events, and of what led to that point. But for now, the sitting president has said this about Abrego Garcia—about the person Fox & Friends viewers heard described as "a gangster:"

 He’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles.

He’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles! That what The Great I-Am said. 

As we noted yesterday,, the White House quickly added this unsigned post on the White House X account:

The White House
@WhiteHouse

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck

In this case, "a duck" was shorthand for "a gangster." This morning, up jumped Kilmeade at 6:07, to pimp this messaging forward.

The present-day "Great I-Am" had posted his most recent shaky claim. Question:

Did his new claim seem to make good sense? Did it seem to make sense to think that Abrego Gracia had MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles, but no one had ever noticed this fact?

In our view, this claim may have possibly seemed to be perhaps a bit improbable! But in this case, as in so many others, the finer journalists in Blue America turned tail and averted their gaze.

Within the next few days, the claim was being repeated all over the underworld of Red America. By Saturday, the claim was being repeated on Fox.

As this claim was spread around, the New York Times and the Washington Post pretended that it hadn't been made. The president had made his latest unlikely claim, but the greats were averting their gaze.

Finally, yesterday, on the fourth day of this latest assault, the Washington Post pushed back. That said, the timorous newspaper chose to do so in the form of an opinion column—not in the form of news reporting concerning this latest odd claim.

The column was written by Philip Bump. It's to his credit that he decided to take The Unlikely Claim Challenge, but we'd have to say he laid out the facts in a way we found  to be somewhat fuzzy.

The occasional blogger had already said that the president photograph of the hand had simply been photoshopped. Bump started with a daring assessment, but things then become just a bit unclear:

At least in the court of public opinion, Abrego García gets a hearing

Not for the first time, President Donald Trump on Friday told an obvious lie.

“This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such ‘a fine and innocent person,’” Trump wrote on social media above an annotated photo of a tattooed hand. The included quote is not attributed, probably because it is Trump exaggerating his critics’ defense of Kilmar Abrego García, the man to whom Trump was referring. “They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles,” the president continued, referring to a criminal gang.

This is categorically not true. In the image Trump is shown holding—one that has the aesthetic of legal documentation, though it doesn’t appear in any public documents—a casual observer might conclude that Abrego García had “M S 1 3” tattooed on his knuckles because that’s what’s shown in the annotation. But that appears to be text meant to suggest an interpretation of the actual tattoos on Abrego García’s knuckles: a marijuana leaf, a smiling face, a cross and a skull.

All of it is clearly speculative. Such as: How is a skull a three? A common explanation is that, well, maybe it used to be a three, but he changed it into a skull? But Trump didn’t even bother going that far. He just said it means MS-13 and there you go.

It’s not even clear where the image or the allegation came from. (A request for comment from the White House did not receive a reply by our deadline.)...

Bump started with a pair of dramatic claims. President Trump had told "an obvious lie." (For the record, we don't know how Bump could have known that.)

Also, the president's claim about Abrego Garcia "was categorically untrue." 

We'll guess that the president's claim was untrue. But here's an obvious question:

Question! If the president had told an obvious lie, why wasn't that fact being reported as a news event on the Washington Post's front pages? We can't expect Bump to raise that question, but we ourselves are raising it here.

From there, Bump proceeded to quote the actual claim The Great I-Am had actually made. He quoted the statement correctly:

"...he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles." 

That actually is what the president said—and Bump had said, still in paragraph 2, that the claim was and is "categorically false!"

From there, things got rather fuzzy.  By paragraph 3, Bump was saying this—and we don't quite know what this means:

A casual observer might conclude that Abrego García had “M S 1 3” tattooed on his knuckles because that’s what’s shown in the annotation. 

That’s what’s shown in the annotation? A handful of bloggers had spoken more clearly:

This bullsh*t was photoshopped!

That's what some bloggers had said. 

Dear readers, can that really be true? is it possible that the sitting president—The Great He-Is—had spread a poisonous claim around, based on a photoshopped photo?

At the news divisions of the Washington Post and the New York Times, it seems that nobody cares. They ran and hid from this president's latest odd claim as they've routinely done in the past, engaging in a type of permissive / deferential behavior which has largely gone unremarked.

Was that really a photoshopped photograph? Knowingly or otherwise, had the president advanced a photoshopped fraud?

At the New York Times, it seems that no one cares. In fact, the reality at the Times seems to be even worse than that, as you can see if you read all the way through this appalling bit of pseudo-reporting—this imitation of life.

(Warning: You'll have to read all the way to paragraph 30.)

At the Washington Post, Philip Bump, to his credit, authored an opinion column challenging this latest claim. The news division has averted its gaze. At the New York Times, the vastly permissive behavior has been astoundingly worse.

This morning, the promulgation of the propaganda started at 6:07. All across the firmament of Blue America, the better people from the finest schools were surreptitiously bowing low in the face of the latest declaration made by The Great I-Am.

We close with this overview of the prevailing situation:

The gentleman in question has been renditioned (not "deported") to a gulag-adjacent "prison." To date, this same person in question has been charged with no crimes!

Tomorrow: We return to Mary Trump's book