Trump Regime Media At The MRC: The Abrego Garcia Story
The Media Research Center sticks to the Trump-approved narrative on deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia -- while hiding the fact he wasn't supposed to be deported at all.
The Media Research Center spent years labeling any media outlet that was the slightest bit nice to President Biden as “regime media.” Hypocrisy being what it is, it was inevitable that that the MRC would transform itself after the 2024 presidential election into Trump Regime Media — shilling for his policies and defending him against any criticism.
That Trump Regime Media tendency came into full flower with the story of arrested immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Jorge Bonilla used an April 3 post to push the approved Trump administration narrative:
The story of the “Maryland father” deported to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT supermax prison continues to garner “victim porn” coverage on Spanish-language media. But in order for the story to stick, there need to be significant omissions and distortions when discussing the “victim” in this case.
Consider the many omissions and deflections during Telemundo’s very brief coverage of the story for its midday newscast:
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The 27-second brief accomplishes its purpose: it casts the “Maryland father” as a victim of President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement, casts the deportation as cruel and imperiling a family, and tries to establish that he is completely innocent of any allegations. But this is false.
The amount of omissions required to make this case to the viewing public is simply astounding. There are no mentions of the individual’s suspected gang affiliations, or of the details of his 2019 arrest. There is no mention of the fact that multiple immigration courts found that there was credible evidence linking the deportee to MS-13 including, per a confidential informant: confirmed affiliation, gang name, and gang rank.
Bonilla’s evidence to back this up is a clip of Amber Duke, a writer for the right-wing Daily Caller, who claimed that it was suspicious that Garcia was wearing Chicago Bulls attire, which is sometimes MS-13 “but not always,” adding that “There are also not a lot of Chicago Bulls fans in Maryland,” and that at the time of his arrest outside a Home Depot, others who were also arrested at the time “were not just MS-13 gang members, but actually ranking members of the gang.” No proof was offered for this, only anonymous claims from a confidential informant. Still, Bonilla insisted that this piece was evidence of “a narrative in furtherance of advocacy against border enforcement.”
The next day, Nicholas Fondacaro referenced the Duke interview to claim that “not one, but two immigration courts found that there was enough evidence to suggest Garcia was in league with the Salvadorian gang MS-13. Apparently, a trusted confidential informant could confirm to federal authorities that Garcia was a ranking member in the gang. When Garcia was first arrested in 2019, he was allegedly associating with other members of MS-13.”
Bill D’Agostino spent an April 7 post complaining that Garcia — who had apparently lived in Maryland since 2019 — was referred to “as a ‘Maryland man’ or ‘Maryland father’ a whopping 120 times, while identifying him as an illegal alien only three times. Meanwhile, MSNBC alone aired eleven objectively false assertions that Garcia was actually a legal resident”:
Garcia has had an outstanding order of removal since 2019. However, because of his supposed fear of persecution by gang members in his home country, an immigration court granted him a withholding of removal to El Salvador. It’s important to note that a withholding of removal does not confer legal residency; rather, it merely means that the individual in question is temporarily exempt from being removed to the one specific country for which he was granted the withholding.
In other words, Garcia still could have been deported to any other country that was willing to take him, and at no point was he granted legal residency.
Predictably, CNN and MSNBC utterly failed to elucidate this distinction to their viewers.
Tim Graham repeated D’Agostino’s spin in his podcast that day.
False conflation
The MRC’s slavish devotion to the Trump narrative on Abrego Garcia continued in an April 15 post by 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:
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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.”
Again, the claims about Abrego-García’s purported gang affiliation are 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).
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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.
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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.
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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:
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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:
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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.
The whining continues
Curtis Houck continued the false conflation in an April 17 post:
On Wednesday afternoon, the White House called a last-minute press briefing featuring “a special guest,” which turned out to be Patty Morin, the mother of Marylander Rachel Morin, who was raped and murdered in 2023 by an illegal immigrant. Patty spoke in graphic detail about Rachel’s murder to a mostly liberal press corps that were left stone-cold silent.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins was the only reporter to speak up aside from the perfunctory condolences of “sorry for your loss”:
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But hours later on her own show The Source, Collins never paid tribute to Rachel or Patty Morin. The former conservative reporter never even brought up the surprise briefing by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Collins further showed her priorities (or at least what the CNN borg wants talked about) with over 18 minutes (18:34) lamenting the plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the illegal immigrant deported to an El Salvadoran jail the liberal media have affectionately called a “Maryland man” or “Maryland father and husband.”
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Rachel Morin left behind five children and now a grandchild. Unfortunately, it sure seemed as though Patty discussing Rachel’s violent murder wasn’t even enough for Collins to feel like Rachel was worth mentioning on her show as it would have taken precious seconds away from the liberal media’s real priority: defending illegal immigrants.
Houck didn’t explain why an immigrant whose rights were violated does not deserve to be defended.
Nicholas Fondacaro spent an April 18 post complaining that the bogus conflation was called out:
The White House press room was left speechless on Thursday after Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt invited Maryland angel mom Patty Morin to speak about her daughter Rachel, who was raped and murdered by an illegal immigrant (a story largely ignored by the liberal media until the briefing). But during Friday’s CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish scoffed and chuckled at Morin as she chided the White House for their “use of the victims’ families.”
Before writing off Morin’s story from discussions of illegal immigration, Cornish did play a soundbite of the grieving mother’s reaction to her Democratic Senator, Chris Van Hollen flying to El Salvador to be with an alleged MS-13 gang member instead of meeting with her:
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But as she was noting that the cases were not directly related, Cornish couldn’t seem to help herself as she openly scoffed and chuckled.
“So, just to be clear, she was not raped or murdered by Kilmar Abrego Garcia. So, two completely different crimes [scoff and chuckle] different times,” she argued. “And Garcia does not actually have a criminal record.”
Fondacaro seems weirdly offended that these truths were pointed out. We thought media watchdogs cared about the truth.