Trump Admits He Could Get Abrego Garcia Back, But Angrily Insists Non-Existent Tattoos Are The Reason He Won’t

Legal Issues

from the the-dumbest-people-on-earth-are-running-the-planet dept

Bizarrely buried near the bottom of NY Times article about the chaos behind the renditioning of people to a Salvadoran gulag is an important detail: the US and El Salvador have already brought back eight people who were “mistakenly” sent there:

In Washington, the Trump administration was working to address Mr. Bukele’s confusion about whom the United States had sent him. Eight women who had been mistakenly sent were swiftly flown back.

That seems to go hand in hand with something else the President said this week. In a revealing “100 days” interview with ABC’s Terry Moran, Donald Trump finally admitted what we’ve been saying all along: he absolutely could get Abrego Garcia — the man his administration illegally shipped to El Salvador — back to the US with a single phone call. And then, in the same breath, he explained why he won’t do it, which directly disobeys a court order, while insisting he “follows the law.”

The exchange about getting Garcia back is stunning in its brazen disregard for court orders and a weird claim that he’s somehow not in charge of his own presidency:

TERRY MORAN: You could get him back. There’s a phone on this desk.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I could.

TERRY MORAN: You could pick it up, and with all —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I could

TERRY MORAN: — the power of the presidency, you could call up the president of El Salvador and say, “Send him back,” right now.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that.

TERRY MORAN: But the court has ordered you —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But he’s not.

TERRY MORAN: — to facilitate that — his release–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’m not the one making this decision. We have lawyers that don’t want —

TERRY MORAN: You’re the president.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — to do this, Terry —

TERRY MORAN: Yeah, but the — but the buck stops in this office —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I — no, no, no, no. I follow the law. You want me to follow the law. If I were the president that just wanted to do anything, I’d probably keep him right where he is —

TERRY MORAN: The Supreme Court says what the law is.

As you’ll recall, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the district court’s order to “facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador” was perfectly valid. For months, the administration has pretended it was somehow impossible to get Garcia back. Now, with a single exchange, Trump — the ChatGPT President who typically generates plausible-sounding words disconnected from reality — accidentally stumbled into admitting the truth.

And that should be interesting to Judge Xinis in the district court, who has repeatedly asked the government what steps it has taken to do that facilitation.

It has been obvious that the answer is “fuck all” this whole time, but for a little while the administration kept (ludicrously) pretending that it was functionally impossible for the US to try to get him back.

So, now you have the President of the US admitting what everyone already knew: that of course he could call up Bukele and get Garcia back. I am assuming that this statement will show up in court before long, if it hasn’t been filed already.

The next part, though, is where things get ridiculous. For Trump to claim “I’m not the one making the decision” is laughable. Dude, you’re the President. You’re the one who keeps running around claiming to have the full power over the executive branch that no one can review. Now, suddenly it’s “the lawyers that don’t want to do this.” C’mon.

And then to put a cherry on top of this gaslighting sundae, he claims “I follow the law” in a discussion about how he is literally doing the exact opposite of that.

Trump’s admission about being able to get Garcia back couldn’t come at a worse time for the DOJ, which has been desperately trying to slow-walk the court case. Judge Xinis, already fed up with their delay tactics, recently shot down their latest attempt to stall. Despite a sealed motion from the government last week that briefly paused proceedings, on Wednesday she ordered discovery to continue on an expedited schedule — everything must be completed by May 14th.

Now the DOJ will need to explain to an increasingly impatient judge why they can’t get Garcia back when their own boss just admitted on national television that he could easily do it with a single phone call and the only thing holding him back were the very DOJ lawyers telling the judge that the President can’t do what she’s ordered.

Which he’s just admitted he can. You almost (but not really, they chose this) feel sorry for the DOJ lawyers who will have to face the judge.

And yet, somehow, admitting he could easily comply with a court order but won’t wasn’t even the craziest part of Trump’s Garcia comments. That distinction belongs to his utterly unhinged insistence that Garcia had “MS-13” tattooed on his knuckles. Let’s start with the actual evidence: when Senator Chris Van Hollen met with Garcia in El Salvador, the photos clearly showed his hand tattoos:

The very next day, Trump held up what he claimed was proof of MS-13 tattoos — but it was clearly just a visual aid with typed letters and explanatory text:

The disconnect between reality and Trump’s claims led to this surreal exchange:

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I campaigned on that issue. I’ve done an amazing job. I have closed borders. He said you couldn’t do it, you wouldn’t be able to do it, it would never happen. Well, it happened. And it happened —

TERRY MORAN: Alright.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — very quickly. Wait a minute. When we have criminals, murderers, criminals in this country, we have to get ’em out. And we’re doing it.

TERRY MORAN: By law —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And you’ll pick out one man, but even the man that you picked out —

TERRY MORAN: He’s got —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — he said he’d — wasn’t a member of a gang. And then they looked, and —

TERRY MORAN: Alright.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: On his knuckles — he had MS-13 —

TERRY MORAN: Alright. There’s dis — there’s a dispute over that —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. He had MS-13 —

TERRY MORAN: Well —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — on his knuckles tattooed.

TERRY MORAN: — he — he — he — it didn’t say– oh, he had some tattoos that are inper — interpreted that way. But let’s move on

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Wait a minute.

TERRY MORAN: I want —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Hey, Terry. Terry. Terry.

TERRY MORAN: He — he did not have the letter —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Don’t do that — M-S-1-3 — It says M-S-one-three.

TERRY MORAN: I — that was Photoshop. So let me just–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That was Photoshop? Terry, you can’t do that — he had —

— he– hey, they’re givin’ you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you’re doin’ the interview. I picked you because — frankly I never heard of you, but that’s okay —

TERRY MORAN: This — I knew this would come —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But I picked you — Terry — but you’re not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattooed —

TERRY MORAN: Alright. Alright. We’ll agree to disagree. I want to move on —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Terry.

TERRY MORAN: — to something else.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Terry. Do you want me to show the picture?

TERRY MORAN: I saw the picture. We’ll — we’ll — we’ll agree to disagree —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Oh, and you think it was Photoshop. Well —

TERRY MORAN: Here we go. Here we go.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — don’t Photoshop it. Go look —

TERRY MORAN: Alright.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — at his hand. He had MS-13 —

TERRY MORAN: Fair enough, he did have tattoos that can be interpreted that way. I’m not an expert on them.

I want to turn to Ukraine, sir —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, no. Terry —

TERRY MORAN: I– I want to get to Ukraine–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Terry, no, no. No, no. He had MS as clear as you can be. Not “interpreted.” This is why people —

TERRY MORAN: Alright.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — no longer believe —

TERRY MORAN: Well.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — the news, because it’s fake news —

TERRY MORAN: When he was photographed in El Sal — in– in El Salvador, they aren’t there. But let’s just go on —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: He is —

TERRY MORAN: They aren’t there when he’s in El Salvador.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –there — oh, oh, they weren’t there —

TERRY MORAN: Take a look at the photograph —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But they’re there now, right?

TERRY MORAN: No. What —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But they’re there now?

TERRY MORAN: They’re in your picture.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Terry.

TERRY MORAN: Ukraine, sir.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: He’s got MS-13 on his knuckles.

TERRY MORAN: Alright. I —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay?

TERRY MORAN: — we’ll — we’ll take a look at it —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s — it’s — you do such a disservice —

TERRY MORAN: We’ll take a look. We’ll take a look at that, sir —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Why don’t you just say, “Yes, he does,” and, you know, go on to something else —

TERRY MORAN: It’s contested.

The video of this exchange is even more jarring than the transcript suggests — Trump growing increasingly agitated as he insists on something demonstrably false:

Just to be 100% clear, the photo Trump held up has the letters M S 1 3 typed on the photo, where it was clearly meant to “explain” the actual symbols. It’s a bit hard to see but the text beneath each symbol is clearly typed on to explain things as well which (to be clear, since apparently this needs to be spelled out for some) do not actually appear on Abrego Garcia’s hand, say “Marijuana,” “Smile”, “Cross,” and “Skull.” The “Marijuana” and the “Smile” are meant to stand in for the supposed M and S of MS13.

This appears to have come via the dumbest game of “Telephone” ever, in which stupid nonsense gets passed along from one ignorant fool to another.

It started with an extremist racist MAGA account on ExTwitter who, four days before the Trump post, had posted a different picture of Garcia’s tattoos and claimed that they stood for MS13, saying “this looks like the most damning evidence yet” and then explaining his ridiculous theory:

Marijuana leaf = M

Smiley face = S

Cross coverup = 1

Skull coverup = 3

MS-13.

Note that, at this point, even he is claiming that the tattoos symbolize the characters. It seems likely that the White House team, whose brains are pickled in the ExTwitter MAGA swamps, likely saw this and decided to try to make a visual aid to match that dipshit’s “damning evidence.”

It appears they then handed their photo and visual aid to Trump, who held it up for a picture to push out on social media, but Trump is seemingly so confused that he saw the obviously typed over bits that are meant to explain the made up symbols that days ago were meant to “coverup” the true meaning… and believed they were actually on his hand, which they clearly are not.

And, just to be absolutely clear, no one who actually understands this stuff thinks those symbols mean MS-13. Every expert that everyone has spoken to gives some version of “what… no… that’s not how any of this works.”

Here’s one fact check that spoke to multiple experts:

“I don’t believe a dangerous individual would have such anodyne and farcically generic tattoos on his hand,” said Liliana Castaneda Rossmann, a California State University San Marcos emerita professor of communication and author of the book Transcending Gangs: Latinas Story Their Experience.

Sean Kennedy, a former federal public defender in California and now a Loyola Law School professor, said in his experience representing and interacting with current and former MS-13 members, “The tattoos in the photo don’t look familiar to me.”

Such designs are out of character with typical MS-13 tattoos, Kennedy said.

“Within MS-13 culture, such markings would likely be frowned upon and even viewed as a sign of cowardice, as they could be interpreted as an attempt to hide or downplay gang affiliation,” Kennedy said. “That type of concealment goes against the gang’s norms, which often demand bold, visible demonstrations of identity and loyalty.”

Charles Katz, director of Arizona State University’s Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety, concurred.

While Katz said local law enforcement would be more familiar with specific tattoo designs in a given region, “I have worked on issues related to MS-13 for the past 15 years in El Salvador and the US, and I have never seen tattoos or graffiti suggesting that these particular tattoos are associated with MS-13.”

Another fact check had even more experts saying these claims make no sense:

“These are definitely NOT MS-13 tattoos,” Thomas Ward, a University of Southern California professor who spent years embedded with MS-13 researching the gang, and is the author of an ethnography that studies MS-13, said in an email.

“Those tattoos do not prove that he’s a member of MS-13,” said Susan Phillips, a Pitzer College professor who has studied gangs and written a book on gang graffiti.

While some gangs will opt for more low-profile or ambiguous means of identifying members to evade detection from law enforcement or rival gang members, MS-13 tattoos, according to Leap, aren’t exactly subtle. They are used to market the gang’s brutality.

“MS-13 members have tattoos that say ‘MS-13,’” Leap said. “They’re not head-scratchers; they’re billboards. There’s no ambiguity.”

So, just to drive this point home: he does not have MS13 tattooed on his hand. He has four symbols, which some rando MAGA dipshit on ExTwitter claimed was a hidden MS13 message that was “covered up.” Brain-pickled White House people tried to run with that rando’s claim by creating a visual aid, and our brain-fogged President stupidly interpreted the visual aid as things that were actually on Abrego Garcia’s hand, leading him to angrily insist to a hapless ABC News anchor that he really had the actual characters M S 1 3 on his knuckles.

It’s a multi-layer cake of stupidity.

This whole debacle exposes two terrifying realities about our current moment:

First, we have a President who can’t distinguish between a visual aid created by his own staff and reality, and who becomes increasingly aggressive when confronted with facts that contradict his delusions. This isn’t just about tattoos. It’s about the most powerful man on the planet with control over our nuclear arsenal, who can’t process basic visual evidence placed directly in front of him.

Second, we have a press corps that remains paralyzed when faced with easily disprovable lies. Moran had everything he needed — the actual photos, the visual aid Trump was misinterpreting (which Trump directly offered to go get!), the experts all saying this made no sense — to decisively show the President was wrong. Instead, he retreated to “let’s agree to disagree” and “it’s contested.”

That’s not journalism. That’s stenography with a side of cowardice.

A real journalist, faced with the most powerful man on earth caught in an easily proven lie, would have pulled up the photos and shown the truth. Instead, we got multiple attempts to “move on” while looking meek and confused. The term “photoshopped” might be technically accurate, but it missed the deeper absurdity: the President of the United States couldn’t tell the difference between his staff’s explanatory text and reality. This wasn’t a cleverly “photoshopped” image designed to fool the President. It was a visual aid that the President was supposed to use to explain the tattoo symbols, yet the President… believed the visual aid markings as if they were real.

The combination — a delusional president and a timid press — is how we got here in the first place. And it’s why Abrego Garcia remains in El Salvador, despite a court order and Trump’s own admission that a single phone call could bring him home.

Filed Under: abrego garcia, donald trump, kilmar abrego garcia, paula xinis, tattoos, terry moran