The Media Research Center’s slavish devotion to the Trump administration’s mandated narrative on jailed immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia continued in an April 15 post by Jorge Bonilla:
The deportation of illegal alien and alleged MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego García continues to trigger the Acela Media to the point of derangement. Case in point: the panel at CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip (A.K.A. the “Thunderdome”), who appear terminally opposed to the idea that the United States should enforce her own borders.
This particular segment was built upon President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele visiting The White House, and subsequent discussion of the Supreme Court opinion holding that President Donald Trump should “facilitate” the release of Abrego Garcia back into the United States. Much of the early panel discussion centered on the plight of “Maryland Dad”, until it was Scott Jennings’ turn to speak. His breakdown of the alleged MS-13 affiliation of the deportee met with a familiar fate:
[…]Per custom, host Abby Phillip jumps in and cuts Jennings off before he can fully flesh out an idea. In this case, the evidence of Abrego-García’s MS-13 affiliation. Phillip complains about the evidence but this is easily remedied by…doing journalism.
Bonilla concluded by huffing: “The biggest and most obvious takeaway from this segment: there is an entire media infrastructure devoted to the idea that a certified MS-13 gang banger should be made to re-enter the United States and remain freely. Let that sink in.”
As we’ve noted, much of the alleged evidence that Abrego-García’s purported gang affiliation is extrapolated through guilt by association, not any actual evidence that Bonilla provided. Bonilla then appended a competing narrative –designed to drown out the fact that the government violated Abrego-García’s rights by deporting him to El Salvador because he feared persecution by other gang members — by hyping an unrelated case in quoting CNN guest Scott Jennings: “Nobody seems to worry about the Maryland mother, Rachel Morin, who was murdered by someone that the previous administration let out of jail.”
Bonilla pushed this dubious equivalence in another post that day:
Each of these networks chose instead to devote prominent A-block time to advocate for fellow Salvadoran illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, the alleged MS-13 gangbanger who was recently deported and sent to El Salvador’s supermax (known as CECOT).
[…]Why omit the story in the first place? For one thing, it affirms the Trump administration’s decision to send Abrego Garcia to CECOT, judicial meddling notwithstanding. It also makes the media look awful in light of the previous administration’s open border policies. And finally, it avoids comparisons between coverage of the “Maryland Dad” vis-a-vis the “Maryland Mom”, as CNN’s Scott Jennings articulated while blowing the panel up.
Because everything at the MRC has to be about fluffing Scott Jennings for his aggressiveness in pushing approved narratives, apparently. He further huffed that “Each of these networks chose instead to devote prominent A-block time to advocate for fellow Salvadoran illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, the alleged MS-13 gangbanger who was recently deported and sent to El Salvador’s supermax (known as CECOT).”
Geoffrey Dickens pushed the baseless equivalence further in yet another April 15 post:
It’s a tale of two different illegal immigrant cases.
On April 14, a Maryland jury found Salvadoran illegal immigrant Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez guilty of the horrific rape and murder of Rachel Morin.
The Maryland mother of five’s 2023 murder was just one of many high profile cases of illegal immigrant crimes that resulted from former President Joe Biden’s border crisis.
[…]However a Maryland case the media DID care about was the deportation of Salvadoran illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia. From April 1 through the morning of April 15, ABC, CBS, NBC spent a total of 64 minutes, 57 seconds on the “Maryland man” trial.
CBS spent the most time (32 minutes, 25 seconds) on Abrego Garcia. NBC came in second with 17 minutes, 3 seconds. ABC aired 15 minutes, 29 seconds on the deported man’s case.
So why the discrepancy?
The Abrego Garcia case allowed network anchors and reporters to berate the Trump administration for “mistakenly” deporting him.
[…]By focusing their attention on the Trump administration’s deportation “mistake” and completely CENSORING the trial of Rachel Morin’s killer the broadcast networks have revealed their agenda to downplay Trump wins against illegal immigration while also burying the Biden administration border security failures.
Dickens didn’t explain why he put “mistake” in scare quotes, given that even he doesn’t dispute that deporting Abrego Garcia was a mistake.
Bonilla complained even more in an April 16 post:
The Legacy Media continue their disgusting advocacy on behalf of Kilmar Abrego García, the illegal alien and documented MS-13 gangbanger deported to El Salvador and detained within its notorious CECOT supermax. And they did so while deliberately ignoring gut-wrenching testimony from Rachel Morin’s mother, Patty.
Additionally, the networks focused their attention on contempt proceedings initiated by Judge James Boasberg against the Trump administration for not turning planes around in midair. ABC and NBC ran this as their respective top story, running over four minutes on both ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News. The only acknowledgement of Patty Morin aired on NBC: 12 seconds that contained no mention of the horrific details of the murder of Rachel Morin:
[…]That’s it. 12 seconds out of 8 minutes. We’re not surprised that the legacy news ignored Patty Morin and even took into consideration the fact that NBC might run with some portion of her remarks. But this is still disgusting.
Perhaps this is why Patty Morin was invited to the White House Briefing Room in the first place- to force the media (and perhaps their elected Democrat counterparts) to reflect on their perfidy, their continued advocacy on behalf of criminal aliens, and on the real damage that these inflict upon society.
Based on the media’s reaction to her remarks, it appears that they’re all in on “Maryland Dad”. Even as the details of his gang affiliation and domestic violence allegations against him continue to drip, drip, drip.
Reasonable individuals might conclude that the unfolding of this story will humiliate the media. Unfortunately, this presumes that the media are capable of shame.
Then again, reasonable individuals thought the unfolding of the exposure of Fox News’ lies about Dominion might have humiliated the MRC for its decades of protection of the channel — but neither Fox News nor the MRC are capable of shame.
Clay Waters joined the politically motivated fretting in an April 17 post:
Tuesday evening’s PBS News Hour, guest hosted by reporter William Brangham, opened with a full nine-minute segment on the “mistaken” deportation of El Salvadoran illegal immigrant (misleadingly named “Maryland man” by the press) Kilmar Abrego Garcia by reporter Laura Barron-Lopez.
Yet a Nexis search for “Rachel Morin” on this show — including in the mix PBS News Weekend — finds the taxpayer-funded outlet has spent zero seconds (the same as all the other networks) on the case of the Maryland mother of five raped and murdered by an El Salvadoran illegal immigrant in 2023. The family blames lack of border enforcement under former President Joe Biden — he’d been nabbed at the border three times previously.
(That shutout would now include no mention of Morin’s mother appearing in the White House briefing room on Wednesday.)
Meanwhile, guest anchor William Brangham was aggrieved about the parallel Maryland illegal story, one where the Trump administration could be blamed.
Waters didn’t deny that the Trump administration deserved that blame — he’s just mad that it was pointed out.
Bonilla was still laboring to equivocate Morin’s story with that of Abrego Garcia in an April 17 post:
Amid the Legacy Media’s willful omission of Patty Morin’s brutal reconstruction of the timeline of her daughter’s murder at the White House Briefing Room, we get a glimmer of intellectual honesty: Telemundo correspondent Lourdes Hurtado asserting inconvenience at having to note Morin’s presence to begin with.
Watch as Hurtado dismisses the horrendous murder of Rachel Morin as “having nothing to do whatsoever” with the matter at hand: the whole of media’s continued advocacy for deported MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia:
[…]The preceding statements to which Hurtado refers are White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s recount of the domestic violence allegations against Abrego García. It is then that Hurtado huffily addresses the inconvenience of having to acknowledge Morin, without so much as uttering Rachel’s name.
Of course, Hurtado has it backwards. The brutal rape and murder of Rachel Morin has EVERYTHING to do with “Maryland Dad”, inasmuch as they are both the byproduct of an intentionally broken border, made exponentially worse by the previous administration.
Bonilla is lying, of course — the two cases have nothing to do with each other, given that nobody disputes the guilt of Morin’s killer while Abrego Garcia was unjustly deported in violation of federal rules.