TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2025
...Morning Joe turns to sports: It's beginning to seem like Karoline Leavitt's favorite word. That favorite word would be "vicious."
In this report for Mediaite, Ahmad Austin transcribes a lengthy exchange involving the person who was shipped to El Salvador through an "administrative error." For background, see this morning's report.
At issue was a basic question:
Why had this person been shipped away, in spite of a six-year-old court order forbidding any such action? According to Leavitt, the answer wasn't real hard to explain.
According to Leavitt, the person in question "was an MS-13 ringleader" and "was also engaged in human trafficking." Not only that, he "is an illegal criminal who broke our nation’s immigration laws."
As she continued, she said that the person in question "is a leader in the brutal MS-13 gang and is involved in human trafficking." After that, she implied that he's "a foreign terrorist" and "an illegal criminal."
As with everything else, it's possible that those claims are true. That said, it's also possible that those claims are false.
Earlier, Leavitt had said "there is a lot of evidence" that the person in support of the claim that the person in question is "a convicted gang member: (Jeff Zeleny's term). She also said that she "saw the evidence this morning."
We're not sure what a "convicted gang member" is, but once that matter has been settled, the general thrust of Leavitt's claim could, of course, always be true. Or then again, possibly not.
Whatever!
After Leavitt's lengthy denunciation of the person in question, Nancy Cordes (CBS News) asked the follow-up question shown below. When she did, this exchange occurred:
CORDES: But a judge ordered that he should remain in this country. So are you saying that it is OK to ignore a judge’s ruling if you don’t like it?
LEAVITT: Who does that judge work for?
CORDES: He’s an immigration judge.
LEAVITT: It was an immigration judge who works for the Department of Justice at the direction of the Attorney General of the United States, whose name is Pam Bondi, who has committed to eradicating MS-13 from our nation’s interior.
And let me tell you why we’ve made this commitment. MS-13, may I remind each and every one of you, is a brutal and vicious gang. They raped and strangled a 20-year-old autistic woman to death in Maryland. They hacked four people to death with machetes in a park on Long Island. They have kidnapped, sexually tortured, and shot a teenage girl in Texas after she insulted them—allegedly—killed and mutilated a 17-year-old girl in Virginia— stabbing him 16 times and cutting off his hands.
They beheaded and cut out the heart of a man in Washington, D.C. They raped and murdered a 13-year-old girl in California. They sex trafficked a slew of young girls, including one who was just 12 years old; raped an 11-year-old girl in Brooklyn while her brother was in the room; sex trafficked a 13-year-old in Maryland and Virginia—miles away from this White House—even beating her 26 times on her backside with a baseball bat; pressured homeless New Yorkers to undergo unnecessary surgeries, such as spinal fusion, in order to bolster their fraudulent lawsuits.
These are vicious criminals. This is a vicious gang, and I wish that the media would spend just a second of the same time you have spent trying to litigate each and every individual of this gang who has been deported from our country as the innocent Americans whose lives have been lost at the hands of these brutal criminals. We maintain our position and very strongly so.
Just like that, the press spokesperson had returned to her litany of claims.
Full disclosure! By all accounts, MS-13 is indeed a vicious gang. Leavitt kept saying "vicious / vicious," but she never spoke to the question(s) at hand:
Is it true that the person in question was involved in any of the vicious crimes she described? Has he been involved in any crimes? Indeed, is it true that the person in question was or is a member of MS-13 at all?
Also, what about that judge's order? Would it be OK to disregard something like that?
Leavitt kept saying "vicious / vicious," but she didn't describe the evidence she said he had seen. Speaking her famous "fluent Trump," she kept insulting and scolding the journalists while failing to answer their blindingly obvious questions.
With respect to the immigration judge in question, his ruling was issued during President Trump's first term in office. Pam Bondi wasn't the AG then. Here's the way the report in "the failing Atlantic" described the circumstances:
An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran Prison
[...]
Court filings show that Abrego Garcia came to the United States at age 16 in 2011 after fleeing gang threats in his native El Salvador. In 2019 he received a form of protected legal status known as “withholding of removal” from a U.S. immigration judge who found he would likely be targeted by gangs if deported back.
Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record in the United States, according to his attorney. The Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record, but called him a “danger to the community” and an active member of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that Trump has declared a foreign terrorist organization.
[His lawyer] said that those charges are false, and that the gang label stems from a 2019 incident when Abrego Garcia and three other men were detained in a Home Depot parking lot by a police detective in Prince George’s County, Maryland. During questioning, one of the men told officers that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, but the man offered no proof and police said they didn’t believe him, filings show. Police did not identify him as a gang member.
Abrego Garcia was not charged with a crime, but he was handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the arrest to face deportation. In those proceedings, the government claimed that a reliable informant had identified him as a ranking member of MS-13. Abrego Garcia and his family hired an attorney and fought the government’s attempt to deport him. He received “withholding of removal” six months later, a protected status.
It is not a path to permanent U.S. residency, but it means the government won’t deport him back to his home country, because he’s more likely than not to face harm there.
According to "the failing Atlantic," so goes the latest (highly complex) story. That said, little complexity will be displayed by those who are currently speaking fluent Trump. As with earlier cultural revolutions, it simply isn't allowed.
Is the person in question a "vicious criminal?" Everything is always possible. We have no ultimate way of knowing the answer to that question.
That said, does Leavitt know the answer to that question? We have no way of knowing that either, but we'd guess that the odds are quite poor.
Meanwhile, is Morning Joe turning itself into ESPN 3? We thought today's first hour was very strange, as was yesterday's first hour.
Please don't ask us for the details. When the zone is being flooded, keeping up is surpassingly hard.
To watch the various exchanges with Leavitt on this topic, click here for the C-Span videotape, then skip ahead to 9:30. The true belief goes on and on, as does the use of a favorite word.
Karoline Leavitt truly believes, in the deepest possible way. Can a nation hope to endure in the face of such unblinking certainty?
"As with everything else, it's possible that those claims are true. That said, it's also possible that those claims are false. "
ReplyDeleteA rational person would make some effort to figure out which of these conditions exists, since something cannot be both true and false at the same time, and there are consequences for both the person affected and for our society.
JD Vance told some lies about this guy, which Leavitt echoes, but these are contradicted by other sources. It certainly matters to this man and his family what is believed about him and his situation.
It is irresponsible to merely parrott what Leavitt says, especially given Trump's tenuous relationship with truth. Somerby seems to think that if he reports two sides to a controversy, he has done his duty and can leave it at that. Life doesn't work that way. I think that if Somerby won't make any effort to find out what is true, then he shouldn't give air space to Leavitt's lies and shouldn't repeat anything at all. Failure to try to find out as closely as possible what may be true IS Somerby's responsibility, just as journalists expend effort to that end. Somerby seems to just want to shrug and say something vapid, such as "it's a crazy old world we live in, with all sorts of people".
Leavitt is an obvious liar. Somerby won't come out and say so. What use is Somerby? None that I can see.
I'll cancel your subscription for you. It's been nice hearing from you, good luck.
DeleteIt is sufficient if you just cancel yourself. Bye bye.
DeleteFor those keeping track, Sweet Karoline Leavitt is the problem for American citizens, not MS-13 gangs who rape, kidnap, murder, and dismember.
ReplyDeleteHow the hell is asking our government to follow due process equated with supporting horrible gang crimes you idiotic dipshits? Our "crime" is not wishing for a criminal government? God the stupid.
DeleteFor those keeping track, the "rule of law" becomes disposable when you're afraid of scary foreign people.
DeleteBoth could be true and probably are. These gangsters might have been deported to El Salvador without proper due process, AND they are truly bad people who do a lot of harm to our country and it's residents. So, it's a trade-off. Both options have upsides and downsides.
DeleteIt's a version of St Anselmo's proof of god's existence: if you can imagine a gruesome crime, then it must have been committed by someone purported to be an MS-13 gang member. Doesn't much matter whether the person in question actually did anything wrong.
DeleteSpeaking of stupid, on cue, I give you David in Cal. They are this or that sentences are not supposed to be some have gone to jail without trial, AND they are truly bad wife beating men. So it's a tradeoff, am I poorly educated, or just an idiot spouting nonsense?
DeleteDavid in Cal,
DeleteMore likely, they were on the verge of curing cancer, and Trump saw the spigot of funds he steals from cancer charities drying up.
Who's to say, really?
MeeMao -- You seem to consider wife-beating to be just as serious as the crimes Tren de Aragua in involved in: murder, kidnapping, human trafficking, drug trafficking, extortion, and forced prostitution.
DeleteTren de Aragua is involved in a range of serious crimes, including murder, kidnapping, human trafficking, drug trafficking, extortion, and forced prostitution. The gang has expanded its criminal activities across several countries in Latin America and the United States, often using violence and intimidation to maintain control.
Suppose you hold a utilitarian philosophy. The greatest good for the greatest number. Consider two strategies and their outcome. The utilitarian chooses #2.
Delete1. Providing weak civil liberties protections for suspected Tren de Aragu suspects. Result: several migrants will be unjustly consigned to a terrible prison in El Salvador.
2. Provide strong civil liberties protections for suspected Tren de Aragua. Result: Many Tren de Aragua members will remain in the US causing some amount of murder, kidnapping, human trafficking, drug trafficking, extortion, and forced prostitution.
Here is the part you don't get. There is no evidence that guy is in that gang. If you apply the same lack of evidence to every resident of the US, you would have to deport us all. We don't have the resources to do that, so it is better to use law enforcement measures to address crime in the US and put those gang-related criminals in jail, then you can deport them safe in the knowledge that they are bad guys, while also prosecuting the crimes on behalf of their victims. Prosecuting and deporting people who are not criminals and not gang members leaves the real gang members free to commit their crimes.
DeleteSo, neither of your two strategies are a good idea because they don't address the ultimate problem, which is that those committing crimes need to be caught and prosecuted by law enforcement, not by terrorizing innocent people.
There are conflicting reports about whether the guy is in one of the other terrorists organizations. But, let's assume he's entirely innocent.
DeleteIMO @8:46's suggestion seems impractical. It assumes that law enforcement can successfully arrest and convict each gang member quickly after he commits a crime. Yet, we know that many of them will remain loose and commit many crimes.
I get frustrated at the Trump Administration implying that there's no civil liberties problem with their deportations. And, I get frustrated with Trump critics who say there's no crime impact from failing to promptly deport as many Tren de Aragua members as possible.
A secondary benefit of Trump's approach is that it discourages criminals from illegally entering the country. In fact, it discourages all illegal immigrants. That's a good thing
No, there is no evidence of gang involvement, another lie. There is no need to act any more quickly than for any other criminal. If you enforce the law guilty illegals are more likely to self deport than if you terrorize innocent people.
DeleteYou keep ignoring that there is no evidence of gang activity or crime after investigation of this guy, which is why the judge let him stay here.
Tourists are not coming here either, which is part of why Trump is causing a recession.
DeleteI really just can't anymore you dipshit DiC. Are you that daft or that dumb?
Delete"I get frustrated with Trump critics who say there's no crime impact from failing to promptly deport as many Tren de Aragua members as possible."
DeleteWhen the suspect is in custody, there is no crime impact from holding him and presenting him to a judge.
"It assumes that law enforcement can successfully arrest and convict each gang member quickly after he commits a crime."
DeleteHo-hum. More calls from David in Cal to de-fund the police.
MeeMao,
DeleteDavid in Cal is not daft or dumb. He just cosplays as daft and dumb, when it's in service to the bigotry which he feels he can't live without.
Sad.
"It assumes that law enforcement can successfully arrest and convict each gang member quickly after he commits a crime."
DeleteYou don't have to have a full trial; you could have a hearing in front of a judge where both sides could present evidence.
What they're doing now is kidnapping.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIsrael Ends All Tariffs on U.S. Goods Ahead of ‘Liberation Day’. This is the upside of Trump's threat of big tariffs. India did something similar.
ReplyDeleteA concern about Trump's tariffs is the US facing retaliatory tariffs from other countries. That could lead to a trade war that hurts all countries. But, here's another way to look at it. The US is already at a disadvantage because of unequal, high tariffs from other counties. The Trump tariffs ARE retaliatory tariffs. They're an appropriate response to unequal tariffs.
Israel and the U.S. signed a free trade agreement 40 years ago and around 98% of goods from the United States are now tax-free. The finance ministry noted that tariff collection from U.S. imports - mainly in the agricultural sector - stands at about 42 million shekels ($11.3 million) a year.
DeleteWoopie doo, Dickhead. They eliminated the remaining 2% of goods. Go fuck yourself. This is going to bring on a self-inflicted recession and you're waving your maggot pom-poms.
You might be right, @7:13. I can imagine scenarios where Trump's policies cause a recession. I can imagine other scenarios where Trump's policies lead to a booming economy. Time will tell.
DeleteEconomists study this stuff. Why imagine anything? Why not read what they are predicting as likely outcomes of Trump’s actions. Hint: Not even the conservatives think there will be a boom. The downward fluctuation of the stock markets shows what expert traders think is coming. I think it is dangerous to plan and invest based on MAGA fantasies (or Trump’s empty promises).
DeleteDiC, may you be an administrative error in the Trump administration.
DeleteThat's right, Dickhead, let's let King Orange Chickenshit throw the dice and bet big against the odds. After all, what the fuck does he have to lose. And he's always had such great luck with the casinos.
Delete@7:29 - You might be right. I haven't checked all the economists, so I can't confirm how many predict a recession or a boom. I am not sure that economists are able to predict the future that well. If they could, they'd be billionaire investors, instead of ordinary economists. But, again I cannot deny that we might be in for a recession. I'm not worried enough to sell all my stocks but I am worried.
DeleteIt’s DiC’s imagination vs a joint statement by 23 Nobel laureate economists in the run up to the election.
DeleteI haven't checked all the economists... a little bit worried Dickhead in Cal.
DeleteSmart move, not checking what economists were saying. I say when making a possibly catastrophic decision, it is best to avoid informing myself to the best of my ability beforehand .
The Fed is estimating a 2% drop in GDP. That means recession.
Delete“ordinary economists” Coming from an extraordinary conduit of bullshit, that is a complement.
DeleteThe right wing likes to wallow in its ignorance, DiC being a prime example.
Delete"Labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards believes that President Donald Trump is poised to make history with his global trade wars, but not the kind of history he will want to be remembered for.
DeleteWriting in Bloomberg, Edwards argued that the United States economy is "plodding toward a recession" and that "this will arguably be the only recession directly caused by White House policy."
While many recessions have a complex series of causes, Edwards believes that the one threatened now will be caused solely by the chaos being set off by Trump's trade wars." Rawstory
“ Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) was among several Republicans sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump’s looming tariffs, warning that they risked causing “irreparable” damage to the farmers in his state.
DeleteA new round of the president’s tariffs is scheduled to roll out Wednesday, imposing reciprocal tariffs on nearly every country that trades with the U.S. Thus far, the stock market has reacted negatively and numerous economists are forecasting a bumpy road ahead, even a looming recession.”
Took all my equities in non taxable accounts and went to cash a month ago. Just as I would not stand in the road relying on the semi driver to stop for me. This is roughly analogous to republican voters electing Bush Jr. to a second term. Same tax breaks to the rich, completely bungled response to a national catastrophe, and cognitively not up to the task of leading this country. But Bush could blame the subprime recession on bankers and Fannie May (the latter inaccurately), whereas all of the blame will be on Trump for this one. And it's gonna be a nasty one if he follows through with his plans. Unfortunately, he has made this country an unreliable trade partner and that will be problematic for some time.
DeleteWhenever I wonder whether MAGA could get any dumber, DiC steps up to the plate. He could have Googled his favorite economist for an opinion on the subject of tariffs , who would state that they are a net negative, bad for the economy, a view Dowell states he shares with with a multitude of other economists. Now, if the Great Thomas Powell had advocated tariffs, DiC would be on it like white on rice.
Deletehttps://www.salisburypost.com/2025/03/23/mitch-kokai-searching-sowell-for-wisdom-about-tariffs-likely-impact/
But go ahead and hang on to your equities DiC, especially TSLA.
sp: Dowell = Stowell
Deleteand Powell = Stowell, f-ing autocorrect on this cheap Amazon tablet
DeleteThe truly mind-blowing thing is that this administration is not even pretending that they are following laws.
ReplyDeleteRFK Jr. should be the first to go but won't be. His remarks about the governor of Wisconsin's weight were embarrassing. Unbelievably nasty and juvenile. Right up Trump's ally. Thought he was funny; the audience was cringing.
DeleteSomerby has attacked top universities, especially the Ivy League, as elitist for decades. He uses attendance at Harvard or Yale as a prima facie criticism of some hapless journalist before ever describing what they did wrong. The right wing feels the same way about our top schools:
ReplyDelete“Oh and Trump has decided to destroy Harvard and Princeton. The small favor here is that the real strength of the American system of higher education is in the land grant institutions that remain under the control of the states, many of which are red and thus have some degree of protection from federal punishment. I don’t know how it all shakes out in the end, but the GOP fixation on elite private institutions could leave the most important parts of the overall system intact, or at least afloat.“ [Lawyers Guns & Money]
This is a highly consistent way in which Somerby and the right wing are fellow travellers. Anti-intellectualism, like his full bore attack on Quine and Putnam this week, even though they addressed and solved those knotty problems raised by Wittgenstein.
Actually Wittgenstein's method was to dissolve problems, not leave them in knots.
DeleteLawyers Guns & Money is right-wing?
DeleteNo, they are decrying Trump’s attack on universities. When you misunderstand, go back and reread.
DeleteTrump is calling for Rachel Maddow and Nicole Wallace to be fired — just like Somerby. Tell me again how liberal Somerby is.
Delete@9:19 that’s guilt by association.
DeleteDave, you’re an imbecile by association.
Delete"....land grand institutions that remain under the control of states, many of which are red and thus have some degree of protection...."
DeleteGot that wrong. University of Florida had managed over the years to climb its way to status of a top tier state university until DeSantis ruined it with a far right wing political agenda , hiring Ben Sasse to run the place, whose woefully inadequate resume had him hiring a $400k+ advisor using state money to tutor him in his job. That plus lavish parties became his undoing when exposed by the student paper. So, no, land grant institutions have no such protection when the governor is Republican.
Tucker Carlson’s father Dick Carlson died March 24.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"Maryland Father" is my middle name.
George "Maryland Father" Soros, at your service.
Well Musk had his ass handed to him, so does that mean the end of Western Civilization?
ReplyDelete