TUESDAY: Will Cain had never heard...

TUESDAY, APRIL 22, 2025

...about what the president said: There's no people-watching like that provided by the Fox News Channel.

Warning! This people-watching is highly instructive, but it isn't amusing. It's recommended that you engage in this hobby only in fairly small doses. 

That said, there's no people-watching to match that which was provided, right through last November, by the Fox & Friends Weekend program. Believe it or not, the lineup went like this:

Fox & Friends Weekend co-hosts, 2024
Will Cain
Rachel Campos-Duffy
Pete Hegseth

Only Campos-Duffy remains. Hegseth has moved on to his current post, which is widely discussed.

Will Cain has also moved on. He's now host of the 4 p.m. weekday program, The Will Cain Show. It replaced the long running, somewhat moderate Your World with Neil Cavuto program, thereby making the Fox News Channel a bit more ideologically reliable.

(We don't mean that as a knock on Cain. It strikes us as a marker of management's current outlook. So too with the recent expansion of one of the dumbest of all "cable news" programs, The Big Weekend Show, which now airs for a full two hours each weekend night.)

Back in the Fox & Friends Weekend days, Campos-Duffy and Hegseth seemed to be "religionists." To our eye and ear, it seemed that Cain was not. 

(For the record, there's no reason why a person shouldn't be deeply invested in his or her religious beliefs. Such investment can create a slightly complex mix with the expectations which may surround present-day "news" delivery.)

At any rate, whatever! Cavuto is OUT and Cain is IN on weekday afternoons. Yesterday, we learned that Cain, who's perfectly bright, doesn't just work for the Fox News Channel:

He also watches its programs!

How do we know that he watches the channel? Over at Mediaite, Michael Luciano delivers the mail, with videotape included:

Democrat Catches Fox’s Will Cain Unaware That Trump Wants To Deport U.S. Citizens

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) caught Will Cain off guard on Monday by explaining that President Donald Trump had expressed a desire to deport U.S. citizens.

[...]

Frost joined Monday’s edition of The Will Cain Show on Fox News from El Salvador, where the lawmaker and three other members of Congress traveled to bring attention to the issue. The congressman noted that Abrego Garcia had been deported and imprisoned without due process.

“We wannna make sure we draw the line here at Kilmar Garcia because it’s not just about him,” Frost said. “It’s about the fact that in the Oval Office, Donald Trump brought up that he wants to do the same thing to quote, unquote, ‘homegrowns.’ Homegrowns being U.S. citizens, a complete violation of our Constitution. I don’t wanna wait until it gets to that point.”

He added that he hears from constituents who say, “It’s him today and it can be one of us tomorrow.”

“Before we move forward, I have to stop there with what you said,” Cain replied. “Donald Trump’s made a statement about wanting to deport American citizens? Do you have that in front of you? I’ve not seen that statement. Can you please quote where that comes from—that he would like to deport American citizens?”

As we've noted, Cain is perfectly bright. That said, he told Rep. Frost, as part of their first exchange, that he'd never heard of President Trump's comments about wanting to ship American citizens off to that foreign "jail."

If you watch the videotape, you'll see that Luciano's account of that exchange is perfectly fair. It seems quite clear that Cain really was unfamiliar with those widely discussed comments by President Trump.

We'd like to think well of Brother Cain. On Fox & Friends Weekend, he was often heroic in the ways he avoided agreeing with his more ardent friends. Sometimes, he'd slip in factual corrections without quite seeming to do so.

That said, we sometimes get the impression that he occasionally "goes along to get along" in order to build his Fox News career. We can now feel certain of at least one thing:

He watches nothing but Fox News Channel programs!

On Fox, they don't report or discuss weird things like the president's stated desire to ship "homegrowns" away to that jail. Instead, they change the subject and start trashing Joe Biden. Through this relentless practice, viewers' minds remain spotless. 

Rather plainly, Will Cain, who is perfectly bright, had never heard about the various statements the president made on this topic! That tells us where he gets (and fails to get) his news, including the many parts of the news he isn't allowed to hear. 

Full and total and complete disclosure:

As we hope to discuss next week, the same phenomenon is known to exist in Blue America—over here!


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


MONDAY: Why do (some) people distrust us Blues?

MONDAY, APRIL 21, 2025

Attention, C-Span callers: Why do (many) people distrust us Blues? 

Consider a phone call, made yesterday, to C-Span's Washington Journal. At the C-Span web site, the segment in question appears beneath this title:

Washington Journal
Kim Wehle on President Trump's Use of Executive Power
Kim Wehle, a law professor, author, and ABC News legal contributor, talked about the Trump administration's use of executive power.

Kim Wehle is a good, decent person. In this instance, we'd say she also provided one answer—out of many—to the question we've posed.

Inevitably, the phone call concerned the claim that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was, and possibly still is, affiliated with MS-13. 

Tariffs are OUT; this topic is IN. The phone call went like this

MODERATOR (4/20/25): Eddie is in New York on our line for Republicans. Good morning, Eddie.

EDDIE FROM NEW YORK: Hi, yes. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions if possible. [Abrego Garcia] did have a deportation order. Two judges said that he was a member of MS-13. Correct?

Eddie kept it short and sweet. At the risk of being repetitious—see our report from last Thursday—he was referring, in part, to this written opinion by Judge Elizabeth Kessler in April 2019:

BOND MEMORANDUM

[...]

The [Department of Homeland Security] opposed the Respondent's request for bond. The DHS asserted that the Respondent is a verified gang member. The Respondent was arrested in the company of other ranking gang members and was confirmed to be a ranking member of the MS-13 gang by a proven and reliable source.

[...]

After considering the information provided by both parties, the Court concluded that no bond was appropriate in this matter. The Court first reasoned that the Respondent failed to meet his burden of demonstrating that his release from custody would not pose a danger to others, as the evidence shows that he is a verified member of MS-13...The Respondent contends that the Form 1-213 in his case erroneously states that he was detained in connection to a murder investigation. He also claims that the 1-213 is internally contradicts itself as to whether the Respondent fears returning to El Salvador. The reason for the Respondent's arrest given on his Form 1-213 does appear at odds with the Gang Field Interview Sheet, which states that the Respondent was approached because he and others were loitering outside of a Home Depot. Regardless, the determination that the Respondent is a gang member appears to be trustworthy and is supported by other evidence in the record, namely, information contained in the Gang Field Interview Sheet. Although the Court is reluctant to give evidentiary weight to the Respondent's clothing as an indication of gang affiliation, the fact that a "past, proven, and reliable source of information" verified the Respondent's gang membership, rank, and gang name is sufficient to support that the Respondent is a gang member, and the Respondent has failed to present evidence to rebut that assertion.

[...]

Elizabeth A. Kessler
Immigration Judge

Here's what Judge Kessler said:

The Respondent was confirmed to be a ranking member of the MS-13 gang by a proven and reliable source...[T]he evidence shows that he is a verified member of MS-13...[T]he determination that the Respondent is a gang member appears to be trustworthy.

Later that year, a second judge more or less affirmed that initial assessment.

As we've said before, the fact that Judge Kessler stated that judgment doesn't necessarily mean that her judgment was accurate. That said, Judge Kessler did state that judgment, rightly or wrongly, in her written opinion—and Eddie from New York had apparently heard about this.

What do (many) people distrust us Blues? For one possible answer (out of many), we'll suggest that you listen to the way Wehle responded to this C-Span caller's question.

(To do so, just click here. Then, move ahead to the 36-minute mark.)

Again, Judge Kessler's assessment may have been wrong (or possibly not), but she did state that assessment. When Eddie called C-Span and asked about this obvious fact, Wehle's response shows us why so many people are disinclined to believe the things they hear from us Blues.

That's why people don't trust us Blues. Why are we Blues disinclined to trust spokesperson for those Reds? As one answer (out of many), we'll recommend this new report from Mediaite:

Karoline Leavitt Insists White House ‘Did Not Make a Mistake’ By Deporting Abrego Garcia—Despite Court Filing

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to admit a Maryland migrant was deported to El Salvador last month due to an administrative error, despite both the Justice Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledging the mistake.

“We did not make a mistake,” Leavitt said as the issue was brought up by Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade Monday morning. “We have always maintained this was an individual who needed to be deported from our country."

She added: “The president swore to the American public he was going to deport illegal criminals, and especially those who have been involved in violent gangs like MS-13 that have terrorized American communities.”

Leavitt is truly amazing. One last word of warning:

Among us Blues, the wiring of our human brain will suggest that Wehle's response to Eddie from New York simply has to be right.

Her response to Eddie wasn't right. It was an example of the way we humans are inclined to behave at highly fraught times such as these.

THE GREAT I-AM: His brother called him "The Great I-Am!"

MONDAY, APRIL 21, 2025

Last Friday, here's what he did: Way back when, in July 2020, Mary Trump published a big, beautiful book.

At the time, she was largely unknown. Her book became a major bestseller. Here's the thumbnail from Simon & Schuster:

Too Much and Never Enough:
How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
By Mary L. Trump

About The Book

In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.

Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens...

The overview continues from there. On the cover of our copy of the book, the author is presented as "Mary L. Trump, Ph.D," presumably to stress her background as a clinical psychologist.

(Also, that presentation distinguishes her from another woman named Mary Trump. We refer to President Trump's late mother, a major figure in her granddaughter's best-selling book.)

Could Simon and Schuster end up in CECOT this year? At present, experts aren't sure! That said, Mary Trump's book spent at least thirteen weeks on the New York Times' best-seller list, but only after debuting in the blockbuster manner described below:

Mary Trump’s tell-all memoir sells 1.35 million copies in blockbuster first week

A tell-all memoir by President Donald Trump’s niece—who claims he has world-endangering emotional problems stemming from childhood trauma inflicted by his parents—has sold 1.35 million copies in its first week, according to publisher Simon & Schuster.

Mary Trump’s “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” is in its 17th printing, the publisher said Thursday...The sales figure, which includes all formats, puts the book on track to being one of the most popular books of the year.

Too Much and Never Enough was a "tell-all memoir," according to that report by CNBC. According to Simon & Schuster, it was "a revelatory, authoritative portrait" of President Trump and his family.

However you want to teach it, the book's Part One is laid out in this way in its Table of Contents, 

PART ONE: THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT

CHAPTER 1: The House
CHAPTER 2: The First Son
CHAPTER 3: The Great I-Am
CHAPTER 4: Expecting to Fly

Chapter 3 is called "The Great I-Am." That refers to a nickname Mary Trump's father, the late Freddy Trump, once gave his younger brother, today's American president. 

(In the book, Mary Trump refers to her father as Freddy. This helps distinguish him from Fred Trump, the president's father, but also from Frederick Trump, Mary Trump's brother, who she refers to as Fritz.)

Freddy Trump was, in fact, the "First Son" of Chapter 2. He was eight years older than his brother Donald. He bestowed the nickname on his younger brother when the latter was something like 11 or 12 years old.

We'll offer more detail as the week proceeds. For now, here's the key paragraph:

CHAPTER THREE
The Great I-Am

[...]

Encouraged by his father, Donald eventually started to believe his own hype. By the time he was twelve, the right side of his mouth was curled up in an almost perpetual sneer of self-conscious superiority, and Freddy had dubbed him “the Great I-Am,” echoing a passage from Exodus he’d learned in Sunday school in which God first reveals himself to Moses.

If accurate, that's a description of a growing misfortune manifesting itself in the life of a child. In this book's account, it started when the child's mother suffered an extremely serious medical incident when he was just two years old.

In her book, Mary Trump is able to pity that child, even as she voices something like contempt for the adult he became. In our view, that's one of the great strengths of her book—her ability to pity the child, even as she says that the child developed into "the world's most dangerous person."

With respect to that childhood nickname—with respect to "The Great I-Am"—can such accounts be trusted from an author who wasn't actually present on the scene at the time?  

Early on, Mary Trump outlines the various sources on whom she draws for her accounts of this important family's history. Along the way, she was apparently told—possibly by her aunt Maryanne, the current president's older sister, now deceased—about "The Great I-Am."

For the record. something else happened to the young Donald Trump "by the time he was twelve." At the start of eighth grade, he was renditioned to the New York Military Academy, a boarding school sixty miles from his home, because he'd become "uncontrollable" at the private school in Queens he'd attended up to that point.

For the record, these is no doubt about the fact that the president was sent to NYMA at the start of eighth grade, or about the fact that he stayed there through his high school graduation.

There is no doubt that he was sent to NYMA by his domineering father. As the week proceeds, we'll show you Mary Trump's account of the background to that decision.

For better or worse, "The Great I-Am" was sent to what his siblings ridiculed as a "reform school." In Mary Trump's telling, this seems to have involved the start of a set of "psychopathologies" which, she says, remained on vivid public display during her uncle's first term in the White House.

Mary Trump is, in fact, a trained clinical psychologist, the holder of a doctorate. Obviously, the fact that she made certain assessments of her uncle doesn't mean that those assessment were automatically accurate, true or correct.

That said, consider what happened last Friday night with respect to the ruler in question. The incident's reverberations will be widely felt, but do any of Blue America's "well-adjusted" leaders care?

Last Friday night, her uncle may have engaged in one of his most remarkable acts of public deception to date. Or was he simply telling the truth? 

We aren't in position to tell you. That said, also this:

As the American experiment may perhaps be coming undone, does anyone possess the intellectual skill and the moral commitment which might allow us the people to know what's true? For that matter, to what extent do Blue elites actually seem to care?

Human history includes many stories of conquest by the planet's most powerful rulers:

Starting around the year 1206, Genghis Khan "united the tribes." Almost a thousand years before that, Alexander the Great is said to have wept when he came to believe that he had "no more worlds to conquer."

Alexander died at age 32. There seems to be no evidence he actually made some such statement

Last Friday night, "the most dangerous person in the world" made his latest somewhat odd presentation. At issue was the question currently roiling the two American nations:

Was Kilmar Abrego Garcia ever a member of the criminal gang, MS-13? Is he some such affiliate even today?

There "The Great I-Am" now sat. situated in the White House. He displayed an apparent photograph of some person's left hand. As you can see by clicking this link, he offered this post on X:

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!

The president was offering talk from the hand! According to the sitting president, the detainee in question has the letters and numbers "M S 1 3" tattooed right there on his knuckles! 

There it was, for all to see! Apparently, no one had noticed!

A second post followed, from the generic White House account. It showed the same photo and reposted the president's text. Also, this White House post said this:

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

The text was so snarky it could have been written by President Bukele himself! According to this second post, the detainee in question quacks like an MS-13 gang member—or at least, he "probably" does.

Starting with the employees of the Fox News Channel, this new claim has been spread all across Red America since last Friday night. Almost three days later, major news orgs from Blue America have almost completely averted their gaze.

Nothing to look at, their three days of silence seem to have said. Let's talk about Hegseth instead!

Some bloggers quickly said that this alleged photograph of the hand had, in fact, been doctored. As of Saturday, New York magazine's Chas Danner had explicitly said the photograph was doctored, though his post was weirdly buried in such a way as to limit its exposure.

Elsewhere, Blue America sat silent. The Great I-Am had spread it around, and the great news orgs of our own Blue America had continued to take a gigantic pass with respect to the fairly obvious fact that something is wrong with this person.

Over time, every great ruler's giant empire has eventually come to an end. Is this latest incident one more episode in a related matter? Is it merely the latest way a certain human experiment is possibly coming undone?

More specifically, is that photograph actually real? Red America is being told that it is. To date, the major elites of Blue America have apparently—once again—chosen to turn tail and run.

For ourselves, we can't answer that question with certainty. Of course, it's possible be that fact-checking will eventually appear among Blue American troops.

That said, when he was maybe eleven years old, his older brother apparently mocked him as "The Great I-Am." Today, he sits in the White House, where, last Friday evening, he went ahead and offered a bit of talk from the hand.

He still claims he won the 2020 election. He would like to send "homegrowns" down south. He also claims he has a photograph of a certain detainee's hand.

Is it real, or it is just the latest "error?" Red America is being told that it's real. As has happened again and again, everyone else in this failing nation has been left by the side of the road.

Nothing to look at, our big orgs have said. The greatest rulers in human history have long said the darnedest things!

Tomorrow: More on this "BREAKING NEWS" allegation, which is now three days old...


SATURDAY: This whole discourse is "not normal!"

SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 2025

Dissembling, Red and Blue: Can the Fox News Channel's Rachel Campos-Duffy possibly be this stupid?

Granted, she's being paid millions of dollars to push the company line. But can she really be this dumb?

Today, at the start of Fox & Friends Weekend, she considered the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was illegally rendered to El Salvador on March 15 through an act of "administrative error."

Question! Is, or was, Abrego Garcia ever a member, or even an affiliate, of the violent gang, MS-13? 

At this point, we'd say there's no clear answer to that question—but at the start of this morning's "cable news" program, Campos-Duffy close to go with true belief and with mandated corporate messaging.

You can see her do that here. Please don't make us transcribe it.

Campos-Duffy seemed to assume that the people shipped into the gulag in question must be guilty as alleged. In fairness to Campos-Duffy, the people who appear on the Fox News Channel are paid to adopt such stances.

Is, or was, Abrego Garcia ever a member of MS-13? At this point, we can't answer that question with any strong assurance.

Neither can anyone else you know, not even Joe Scarborough. That said, the thumbs have been on the scales all over American "cable news" with respect to that lingering question. 

Borrowing from Al Pacino, this whole American discourse of out of order! For example:

Yesterday afternoon, on the most-watched "cable news" program of all, one of the program's disordered co-hosts started a pseudo-discussion of this matter in the manner shown below. 

His presentation started at 5:04 Eastern. A quotation by Judge Wilkinson had already been doctored as Dana Perino pretended to lay out the basic facts of the case.

Tape had been played of President Trump calling Senator Van Hollen "a fake." Indeed, Trump had said that Van Hollen "looked like a fool" in his recent visit with Abrego Garcia, moderator Perino had said. 

Perino then threw to co-host Greg Gutfeld. He started the pseudo-discussion in the manner shown. We'll focus on the mandated presumption of guilt, along with the standard name-calling:

GUTFELD (4/18/25): ...I remember the beer summit between Obama and Henry Louis Gates. This was the barf summit. 

People are talking about the margarita. I get it. that is like debating the type of iceberg that the Titanic hit.

You know, if you hadn't pushed for this ridiculous stunt using this thug as a prop. Sorry, you can't complain if we turned it into a more absurd joke. 

You know, your photo op was ruined by a margarita. We don't care. Again, this is all downstream from the real and original sin, the Dems' abdication of the border. 

You let him in. Our job to ship him out. We're cleaning up the mess you made. 

Again, the legal argument, above my pay grade. I refuse to use this beautiful brain of mine on some solitary, violent creep out of billions on the planet, Dana. 

I have a family. I have a dog. I have a job. I have friends, co-workers. I have high cholesterol! [STARTING TO SHOUT] He doesn't deserve a spot in my brain, and he can't jump to the front of the line just because he's convinced the left that he's father of the freaking year. Just because you're dating a dirtbag doesn't mean I have to like his pictures on Instagram.

And the fact that Trump has to waste his time on this scum? This is what the Dems do! They choose one anecdote, one solitary person, and expect you to play their fake game of concern.  I won't. 

Again, I don't care. You want to make, you want to make this about due process? That's fine. Maybe try to pick an example that is more appealing, like an actual American perhaps.

I will finish shortly but I'm a little mad. Not really. 

The Dems always make one anecdote really important without processing whether it has any connection to the greater whole. Here you have a victim of a murder and a rape, Rachel Morin. Everybody looks at her and goes, "That could be my sister, that could be my mother. That could be my daughter." 

What do the Dems offer? A gang banger.  Nobody at home is going, "Oh, that could be my husband, my son. Oh, my brother, the MS-13 wife beater."

You picked the wrong example. You know, we didn't say, "We are going to take Rachel. You take the gang banger." You chose that option yourself! And you've done it before. You've done it with Hamas, you've done it with BLM. You did it with Antifa, you did it with looters. You did it with—I could go on.

This is the sunk cost fallacy of the Democrats. They can't admit that they picked the wrong person. or else, you know, they could turn back, but they can't.

Just find a better example and we'll listen. But you know what? I'm not interested in the legal argument. I'm interested in getting criminals out. I'm not going to waste any more breath on this guy.

PERINO: Well, those are good breaths.

That's the way the "discussion" started. For the record, Perino is included in the cast to convey the questionable impression that the Red co-hosts aren't all nuts.

In that lengthy harangue, you see the way the pseudo-discussion started. There's merit to some of what this fellow said, but we invite you to focus on one point—on his assumption that Abrego Garcia is in fact a "gangbanger," and a "criminal," and a member of MS-13.

(He was also said to be a violent creep, a dirtbag, scum and a thug.)

Gutfeld explicitly said that Abrego Garcia was a gangbanger and a criminal. He called him a gangbanger twice. Along the way, he also said the whole thing was too much for nis brain—and he said he doesn't care. 

No one will doubt those last two points. But what about the central assumption—the assumption, loudly voiced by this multimillionaire messenger man, that Abrego Garcia is a criminal gangbanger with MS-13?

Question! Is, or was, Abrego Garcia some part of MS-13? It's possible that he actually was or is—but it's also possible that he isn't and that he never was. 

That said, for the messengers on this propaganda program, there's only one possible stance. To these corporate errand persons, Abrego Garcia is known to be "a gang banger." 

Except, no such thing is known to be true at the present time.

For an example of the way this game is played, we invite you to click ahead to the point where Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal among the five co-hosts, tried to make the liberal case about this complex matter. 

In our view, she too offered a selective account of what is actually known at this time. But the fun began when she tried to present that case. 

As you can see, Gutfeld interrupted her first, with other interruptions to follow. This is the way these highly paid, corporate stooges play this sick reindeer game.

At this point, we refer back to the headline which sat atop yesterday's column by David Brooks. The headline started with this unmistakable claim:

What’s Happening Is Not Normal...

Truer words were never spoken. Or is the conduct of errand boys like the 60-year-old Gutfeld the most normal thing on the planet, given the actual nature of our badly flawed human wiring?

Full disclosure! Why do we say it's possible that Abrego Garcia was, or possibly still is, some sort of MS-13 affiliate? 

In part, we say that because of what happened 2019—because of events which were disappeared from Blue America's account of this matter right at the very start.

Improbably, Pam Bondi even made a statement about those events which was basically accurate! Here's what we're talking about

In 2019, immigration judge Elizabeth Kessler made an assessment which could possibly have been right. In a formal written order, Judge Kessler said this:

[Abrego Garcia] was arrested in the company of other ranking gang members and was confirmed to be a ranking member of the MS-13 gang by a proven and reliable source...The evidence shows that he is a verified member of MS-13.

That was the judge's assessment. That assessment may have been wrong—but it also may have been right. 

Full disclosure! In this report for The New Republic, Greg Sargent reported new material which could cast doubt of the evidence presented to Judge Kessler—but Sargent also explicitly stated this obvious point:

By itself, of course, this does not settle whether Abrego Garcia was ever in MS-13. 

We tip our hat to Sargent! That said, other Blues, not excluding Tarlov herself, have taken Sargent's revelation and run, suggesting that the evidence presented to Kessler was just plainly wrong.

There's no good reason to say that. It's entirely possible that Kessler's assessment was actually right.

Is it possible that Abrego Garcia actually was an affiliate of MS-13 back in 2019? It's possible that he was, and it's possible that he wasn't. But then too, there's the peculiar incident from 2022 that came to light this week.

With apologies, here's the way the new information was reported on the Fox News site. We regard this presentation as basically fair and accurate:

Kilmar Abrego-Garcia suspected of human trafficking in report obtained by Fox News

Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, who was recently deported to El Salvador, was suspected of partaking in labor/human trafficking, according to a 2022 Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) report obtained by Fox News....

According to the report, on Dec. 1, 2022, a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper stopped Garcia after he was "observed speeding" and unable to stay in his lane. The trooper noticed eight individuals in the car with Abrego-Garcia, who said he began driving three days prior from Houston, Texas, to Temple Hills, Md., via St. Louis, Mo. to "perform construction work." The report states that the trooper suspected it was a human trafficking incident, as there was no luggage in the vehicle. Additionally, the individuals in the car reportedly gave the same address as Abrego-Garica's home address.

When speaking with the trooper, Abrego-Garcia allegedly "pretended to speak less English than he was capable of and attempted to put encountering officer off-track by responding to questions with questions." After the incident, the officer decided not to give Abrego-Garcia a citation for the driving infractions, but rather to give him a warning for driving with an expired license. 

This seems like a rather unusual incident. The conduct here may have been completely innocent—but then again, imaginably not. Here's the way the somewhat peculiar incident has been reported by the Associated Press:

Who is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man ICE mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison?

[...]

In 2022, according to a report released by the Trump administration, Abrego Garcia was stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol for speeding. The vehicle had eight other people and no luggage, prompting an officer to suspect human trafficking, the report stated.

Abrego Garcia said he was driving them from Texas to Maryland for construction work, the report stated. No citations were issued.

Abrego Garcia’s wife said in a statement that he sometimes transported groups of workers between job sites, “so it’s entirely plausible he would have been pulled over while driving with others in the vehicle. He was not charged with any crime or cited for any wrongdoing.”

It's true! After a lengthy stop, no charge of trafficking was made. 

Other reports of this incident go into more detail about the way that decision was made, stretching back to a call to the FBI. That said, Blue American observers have tended to wish this apparent strangeness away, to the extent that they mention this matter at all.

(The matter of domestic violence has also surfaced in the past week. This has no apparent relevance to the question of affiliation with MS-13, but we liberals are accepting the way his wife is now explaining this matter. It's hard to miss the way our stance seems to contradict previous tribal consensus about matters of this type.)

Is it possible that he was? is it possible that he wasn't?

As Judge Wilkinson said, the answer to each of those questions is yes! But maniacs on the Fox News Channel are assuming that Abrego Garcia was and is "a gangbanger" and "a criminal." Playing defense, people on MSNBC are largely disappearing that possibility, or are finding ways to wish it away.

We'll end at the beginning. When Bondi amazingly got something right, she said that two immigration judges had said, in 2019, that Abrego Garcia was a gang member.

Those assessments may have been right or they may have been wrong. But Judge Kessler had clearly stated that assessment, and a second immigration judge had basically seemed to concur.

That actually happened in 2019—unless you read The Atlantic! Here's the relevant passage from the original report—from the report which first brought this unresolved matter to light:

An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran Prison

[...]

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.

We read that account when it appeared. From it, we formed our initial impression of this complicated matter.

Later, we came to feel that we'd been misled by what The Atlantic published. As you can see, Nick Miroff completely disappeared a basic part of the story—the part of the story in which Judge Kesslsr did in fact reach the formal assessment that Abrego Garcia was in fact a gang member.

That assessment somehow disappeared from The Atlantic's report. By the way, also this:

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 said they didn’t believe him, filings show? The Atlantic offered no link to those alleged filings. We've never seen anyone else refer to any such statement by "police."

Our whole discourse is out of order. It may be too late to fix the situation which exists.

In our view, Fox News Channel is a cancer on the American project. What Joe Scarborough did yesterday morning, during Morning Joe's first half hour, was perhaps almost as bad.

Blues are offered one account. Reds are offered another. 

A modern nation can't function this way. Next weel, all week long: 

Quoting from Mary Trump's best-selling book, we'll consider "The Great I Am"