FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 2025
Running on morally empty: Starting very early on Tuesday morning, we advanced a basic precept:
The key word is "alleged."
Over the weekend, the Stumblebums had frogmarched hundreds of people off to a Central American gulag. The people in question were "alleged gang members," major news orgs now said.
They key word there was "alleged!" That was especially true given the medieval nature of the gulag into which these people had been shipped.
On what basis could an actual gang member be "deported" in this unconventional way? Like much of the upper-end press, we've sidestepped that question this week.
We've focused instead on a different question:
What if some of the alleged gang members are actually no such thing?
What if some of the deportees aren't killers or rapists or monsters? Could that possibly even be true of most of the deportees?
What if it was true of only one of these people? Given the endless errors committed by the Stumblebums in question, the possible problem was obvious—unless you were one of the vacuous people employed by Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, then paraded before the nation each morning on the "cable news" gong-show known as Fox & Friends.
Last Tuesday morning, bright and early, the quartet of friends were clucking about the removals. In that morning's brief report, we described it as the most morally vacuous conversation ever staged on the planet.
Today, we'll show you what was said. First, though, we want to discuss the power of the word "alleged."
It happened last night on the PBS NewsHour. Three hours later, the phenomenon jumped to The Rachel Maddow Show.
Lawyers had begun to claim that some of the alleged gang members weren't actual gang members. Despite that claim, there they now sit, down there in the gulag.
For the record, "sworn declarations" may not be accurate—but, quite often, they are! On the PBS NewsHour, here what Amna Nawaz and Laura Barron-Lopez now said:
NAWAZ (3/20/25): ...The administration has already deported some 200 migrants to El Salvador. They claim that they were all members of a violent gang, Tren de Aragua.
Family members and lawyers have since been coming out and saying these men are not all gang members, they were wrongfully arrested and deported. What are we learning?
BARRON-LOPEZ: So we have new sworn declarations that were made overnight to the court. And in one of those, a lawyer representing one of the Venezuelan nationals who was deported to El Salvador provided information about this Venezuelan national.
And so this Venezuelan migrant is Jerce Reyes Barrios. He's a 26-year-old professional soccer player and coach. He protested the authoritarian rule of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. And then he fled Venezuela in early 2024 after being tortured with electric shock.
And he legally applied for asylum and entered the U.S. and then was detained as his case, his asylum case was playing out. But his lawyers said that the government accused him of being a member of Tren de Aragua based on two things.
First, an arm tattoo—quote—"of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word dios." In reality, he chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid.
The second thing that DHS points to is a photo of Mr. Reyes Barrios on social media of him making a hand gesture that the DHS alleges is proof of gang membership. And his lawyer said that—quote—"In fact, the gesture is a common one that means 'I love you' in sign language and is commonly used as a rock 'n' roll symbol."
His lawyer also added that his legal counsel as well as his family have lost all contact with him and have no information about his condition.
In our view, Baron-Lopez should have said "allegedly" at several points as she reported what legal counsel had said.
At any rate, Barrios is now in the gulag, from which he may never return. He is indeed an alleged gang member. But in the absence of anything like due process, what is the actual truth?
The Stumblebums say they based their assessment on a pair of somewhat flimsy grounds. We Americans are supposed to follow Frost's ancient precept:
Trust us, the Voices said.
That said, should we trust the Voices in question? At present, they're best known for their endless errors, but also for their frequent ludicrous claims.
Have some, perhaps many, of the deportees been swept up in their latest mistake? On Tuesday morning's Fox & Friends, the children made it very clear:
Over here, on the Fox News Channel, we don't care about questions like that.
The children—the friends—made that quite clear. This morning, we're saying their names:
Fox & Friends co-hosts: March 18, 2025
Lawrence Jones: regular co-host, Fox & Friends
Steve Doocy: regular co-host, Fox & Friends
Ainsley Earhardt: regular co-host, Fox & Friends
Brian Kilmeade: regular co-host, Fox & Friends
On Tuesday morning, there they sat! They sat on the type of tuffet routinely selected by the storebought and by the morally vacuous.
In the end, it may not be their actual fault that they're morally vacuous. But right there, at 6:15 a.m., this was the first thing the flyweights said concerning these "deportations:"
EARHARDT (6/18/25): Back here at home, there are 261 illegal MS-13 gang members, some MS-13 ringleaders—Donald Trump is calling them "terrorists" because many of them don't have America's best interests in mind. And they're here illegally.
So he puts them on planes, he sends them to El Salvador, and in the middle of those flights, a judge says, "No, you have to stop, you have to turn those planes around." And Donald Trump says, "Well, they're not in American air space any more, so it's too little, too late."
That's how the childishness started. In the short term, a bit of clatter noted the fact that the ACLU had tried to stop these flights. But at 6:17, Kilmeade brought the eternal note of sadness in.
In this case, that eternal note of sadness was, in fact, the obvious sound of an ad hominem attack—and of corporate propaganda:
KILMEADE: Remember who this judge is. He's an Obama-appointed judge who...allowed Carter Page to be surveilled illegally. He basically got a slap on the wrist.
Remember also, this judge has got a wife who is a radical leftist—Hillary Clinton, huge Hillary Clinton supporter. He seems to be an activist judge, and he seems to be getting really ahead of himself on how much weight he actually carries in terms of foreign policy with America.
Here's our press secretary yesterday:
LEAVITT (videotape): These are heinous monsters, rapists, murderers, kidnappers, sexual assaulters, predators who have no right to be in this country and they must be held accountable...
You may be getting the picture. For the record, what if one (or more) of these heinous monsters aren't heinous monsters at all? Also, if you've been granted the right to apply for asylum, is it true that you "have no right to be in this country?"
Leavitt was poisoning the well against any thought that any of the deportees could have been wrongly shipped off to the gulag. In turn, Kilmeade was poisoning the well against the work of this activist judge.
The judge has a radical activist wife. Also, Hillary Clinton!!!!! (For the record, the judge was initially named to the bench by President George W. Bush.)
This is the way children like these guarantee the millions of dollars they get paid by their corporate owners. Along the way, no one mentioned the presence of the possibly troubling word "alleged" in news reports about the wat these 261 people had been disappeared into a brutal gulag.
None of the children mentioned that word—but sure enough! Right on cue, at 6:19, Earnhardt piped up with this:
JONES: So, it's one thing to object to a few people on the plane. But to say that all of the planes, full of MS-13, Tren de Aragua, that have been—
EARHART: Why would you be upset about that?
JONES: Why would you say, "Bring those planes back to this country?" It just doesn't make any sense!
Uh-oh! Jones had almost suggested the possibility that some of the people on the planes might not be actual gang members—might be on the planes by mistake.
Innocent people were possibly being frogmarched away to a gulag! "Why would [someone] be upset about that?" the perpetually compliant Earhardt now thoughtfully asked.
(We think we're capturing Earhardt's meaning based on the full context.)
"Why would [someone] be upset about that?" This question provided the framework for what was coming next.
What was coming next was this. Instantly, Kilmeade went there:
KILMEADE: So here's my question. We've got to get more of these guys out. We cut a great deal with El Salvador. They know how to lock and hold brutal prisoners, right? We saw that whole system.
Six million bucks? You can't go wrong! So this is a deal that Marco Rubio helped cut. It's awesome.
Down in El Salvador, a strongman was only charging us $6 million (per year) for the use of his gulag.
"You can't go wrong" at that price, Kilmeade said. The strongman gave us a wonderful price! At that price, this was an awesome deal!
As the conversation continued, "due process" was briefly mentioned once, then was quickly discarded. Jones thundered as he constantly does, playing the role of the loudmouth.
Endless complications were cited. Before long, he and Earhardt were saying this about the 1798 law which was tangled up in the legal brouhaha:
JONES: When you think about it, Ainsley, it's common sense. We don't see anything about the Constitution being too old.
EARHARDT: Is it an act of war? Are we in the middle of a war? Who cares? These guys are the worst of the worst. Get them out of the country! Most Americans would agree with that.
Earnhardt persistently presents herself as a South Carolina Christian. That said, is it possible that innocent people had been frogmarched away?
"Who cares?" she thoughtfully said. "These guys are the worst of the worst," she said. But what if some of them aren't?
And so it went, this Tuesday morning, among Suzanne Scott's employees.
We can't transcribe their full conversation. Assuming you can make the Internet Archive work, you can see the whole thing by clicking the links we've offered above, then by clicking some more.
At any rate, the strongman had given us a good price! But also, Who actually cares?
This morally vacuous pabulum is slipped into Red America's oatmeal for four hours every morning. The friends are paid millions of dollars to say these things—but in full fairness, in the end, this is most likely all they have.
That said, also this:
Last Friday night, at the end of the show, Jeffrey Goldberg made a somewhat strange statement.
He hosts the PBS program, Washington Week. He's editor of The Atlantic. The gent is thoroughly sharp.
As the program ended, Goldberg said this. But who was he talking about?
GOLDBERG (3/14/25): Unfortunately, we need to leave it there for now, but I'm sure we're going to be revisiting these questions again. I want to thank our panelists for joining us and our viewers as well.
For more on what ketamine does to the human brain, and I'm not saying whose brain, please visit theatlantic.com.
I'm Jeffrey Goldberg. Good night from Washington.
Ketamine hadn't been mentioned during the program. What in the world was he talking about, and why was he being so coy?
This afternoon: "He was somebody's darling..."
Tomorrow: The Ketamine Kid
