We’ve shown how the Media Research Center has been cheering the partisan aspects of the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case because it allegedly makes Republicans look good. Mark Finkelstein took this fawning to the next level in an April 20 post freaking out over MSNBC’s Symone Sanders arguing that “people of color and vulnerable communities that are next in line” to be deported:
If NewsBusters were to introduce a Scaremonger of the Month award, Symone Sanders would be the runaway winner for April.
[…]Show guest Democrat Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents the district where “Maryland man” Abrego Garcia lived, agreed with Sanders’ outlandish fear-mongering: “I think that’s right.”
Sanders’ evidence in support of her alarmist allegation? Nada–as Abrego Garcia would say. Let’s review:
No one disputes that Abrego Garcia was in the US illegally. That in itself made him a candidate for deportation. He obtained a court order protecting him from deportation on the basis, according to his lawyer, that Abrego Garcia had a “‘well-founded’ fear of persecution by Barrio-18, the main rival gang of MS-13.”
As we wrote earlier this week:
“Ask yourself: why would Abrego Garcia have a ‘well-founded fear of persecution by the main rival gang of MS-13’ unless he had a real connection to that gang?”
Finkelstein then hyped how Abrego Garcia should be a winning issue in next year’s midterm elections:
“Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you” was perhaps the most consequential ad in presidential campaign history, sinking any chances Harris might have had.
Now it seems that Democrats, with big helping hands from Symone Sanders and the rest of the liberal media, are determined to make their championing of Abrego Garcia a key issue leading into the 2026 midterms.
The Republican ad makers are no doubt busy at work:
“Democrats are for alleged gang member and wife-beater Abrego Garcia. Republicans are for you.”
Unmentioned by Finkelstein: the fact that the Trump administration violated Abrego Garcia’s right to due process by deporting him despite a protection order forbidding it. He also failed to prove Sanders’ remark about alleged future deportation to be wrong, let alone the “scaremongering” he claims it is.
Bill D’Agostino spent an April 21 post whining that a man who had lived in Maryland since 2019 was described as a “Maryland man”:
This past week, the Trump administration revealed more incriminating evidence about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the illegal alien recently deported to El Salvador despite a withholding of removal to that country. Yet liberal cable networks CNN and MSNBC have mostly ignored the latest developments, and instead have continued to obfuscate the truth about this so-called “Maryland man.”
[…]Across 161 stories about Garcia, MSNBC only bothered to mention that he was in the U.S. illegally 11 times (6.8%). Furthermore, the fact that he was El Salvadoran, and not an American citizen, was only included in 30 percent of their reports (48 times). Meanwhile, CNN mentioned Garcia’s illegal status just 21 times across 157 different segments (13.4%), and his status as a Salvadoran national featured in 34 percent of reports (54 times).
Both networks together mentioned Garcia’s El Salvadoran nationality in just under one third of all reports: 102 times total across 506 segments. In other words, they were nearly five times more likely to describe Garcia as being from Maryland than they were to correctly identify his country of origin.
But Abrego Garcia did, in fact, live in Maryland for six years, and the fact that he is a native of another country is irrelevant.
D’Agostino continued to serve as Trump’s stenographer:
Last week, the Trump administration brought forward two new allegations about Garcia, which the liberal cable networks largely ignored.
In 2021, Garcia’s wife filed a protective order in which she accused him of domestic violence. Specifically, the order alleged that he had “punched and scratched” her eye, “leaving her bleeding.” The following year, authorities in Tennessee detained Garcia on suspicion of human trafficking after he was caught driving without a license.
D’Agostino offered no evidence he tried to fact-check those claims. And even if they are true, they do not justify Abrego Garcia’s illegal deportation.
Tim Graham ranted in another April 21 post:
ABC This Week host Jonathan Karl interviewed Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) on Sunday all about their favorite illegal alien Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but Karl never mentioned the trial about the murder of Maryland mother of five Rachel Morin by an illegal alien. ABC clearly doesn’t care about her family’s loss — and neither did the senator. He went to El Salvador for Abrego Garcia, but never got in touch with Patty Morin, Rachel Morin’s mother.
Morin’s death has absolutely nothing to do with Abrego Gracia, and Graham is lying by insisting the two are related. Later that day, Graham touched on this during an interview with a Daily Caller podcast — but he refused to tell his readers that the Daily Caller is a right-wing outlet who was more than happy to help Graham parrot his propaganda.
Brad Wilmouth served up his own right-wing-friendly spin in yet another post that day:
Appearing as a guest on Thursday’s The Source with CNN host Kaitlan Collins, border czar Tom Homan called out the media’s liberal slant on illegal immigration as the two debated the deportation of alleged MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to his home country of El Salvador.
After Homan gave his opinion that the order of withholding that had previously prevented Garcia from being sent back to his home country became “meaningless” after MS-13 was declared a terrorist organization by the Donald Trump administration, Collins followed up:
[…]Noting that he is not an attorney and was merely giving his opinion from his experience as a law enforcement officer, Homan reiterated that he believed that it was appropriate to ignore the order of withholding after MS-13 was declared to be a terrorist group, and also argued that, unlike in 2019, El Salvador is a much safer country now so that Garcia would no longer have a legitimate claim of being in danger from rival gangs.
[…]Undeterred, the CNN host followed up: “But why not make that argument in court? If you think that you can make the argument that he is fine to go back to El Salvador, why not — why not just make that argument and try to terminate that order that said that the one place that he couldn’t go to was the one place that he was sent to?”
Homan soon called out the media’s double standard in demanding that illegal aliens be vetted before they are deported but not pressing President Joe Biden to vet them when he was allowing millions to enter the country illegally:
But vetting is not the issue — illegally someone is. Still, Wilmouth insisted; “It is noteworthy that CNN has admitted that El Salvador is a much safer country now than it was five years ago, thus undermining the argument that Garcia would need to be protected from gangs in his home country.” Again, no definitive proof was offered that Abrego Garcia actually is a gang member, nor did he disclose that the El Salvador prison to which he was sent offers no constitutional rights to its prisoners. Wilmouth also failed to offer any evidence to support Homan’s claim about
Curtis Houck was in full Trump Regime Media mode in an April 22 post on the subject:
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt opened Tuesday’s press briefing on a heater, spreading far and wide facts the liberal media have refused to properly spotlight on the meteoric fall of border crossings and then turning to Timcast’s Tim Pool for a question about the liberal media’s coddling of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Before restating the facts about Garcia being far from the innocent Father of the Year-like figure the liberal media have portrayed him as, Pool spoke straight into the eyes of the liberal corporate media when he declared “[m]any of these organizations that are represented in this room have lockstep on false narratives such as the very fine people hoax, the Covington smear, and now what is being called the ‘Maryland man’ hoax.”
He then wondered what Leavitt made of this and if this will spurn more changes in the Briefing Room given their “unprofessional behavior.” Leavitt maintained the administration welcomes “diverse viewpoints,” but wants to empower “unbiased journalists who really care about the truth and the facts and accuracy”:
Who’s calling it a “hoax”? Only Pool, Houck and his fellow MRCers. But it’s not a hoax because he really reside in Maryland. Further, the “very fine people hoax” and the “Covington hoax” were both quite real. And Houck failed to mention that Pool was among a group of right-wing influencers paid by a company that was a front for a Russian influence operation (without their knowledge, they claim).
In clinging to these bogus stories and right-wingers, Houck seems to have discredited himself.