Trump Regime Media At The MRC: The Abrego Garcia Story, Part 2
The Media Research Center continued its determination to deny that Kilmar Abrego Garcia wasn't supposed to be deported in the first place and to falsely conflate his case with a murder.
The Media Research Center has been in full Trump Regime Media mode regarding the case of deported migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia — hyping unverified claims about his purported gang affiliations, falsely conflating him with an illegal immigrant who committed murder in a case that has absolutely nothing to do with Abrego Garcia, and ignoring the fact that he was never supposed to be deported in the first place. Unsurprisingly, the MRC remained committed to that dishonest narrative.
Mark Finkelstein clung to the narrative in an April 18 post:
Of all the news outlets you wouldn’t expect to be supplying vital information indicating that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a gang member, the notoriously lefty BBC has to be near the top of the list.
And yet . . .
On today’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough went on a rumbling, bumbling, stumbling defense of Abrego Garcia–check the video beginning at 35 seconds for Scarborough doing his best bumbling Biden impression.
But Scarborough ended by emphatically exclaiming: “This whole idea that he’s a gang member: no he’s not! It was never proved.”
Scarborough also stressed that Abrego Garcia had not been convicted of a crime in the US. But no one denies that he was an illegal alien. Add to that his apparent gang connection, and he was ripe for deportation. Adios, amigo!
But Abrego Garcia’s alleged gang affiliation really hasn’t been proven. As the Washington Post pointed out, his name appears on a defunct database, and it was added by a corrupt cop.
Curtis Houck served up an April 18 post angry that a congressman met with Abrego Garcia:
On Friday, the “Big Three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC had full segments on their flagship morning news shows heralding Maryland Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen for flying down to El Salvador and meeting with alleged MS-13 gang member and former illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the liberal media are acting as though he’s an early frontrunner for the 2025 Time Person of the Year.
ABC’s Good Morning America had an interview later in the show with Garcia’s wife (which was weird), so they made sure to set the table. Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos began: “We’re going to get the latest now on the showdown over the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia as he presses for the prisoner’s release and an appeals court weighs in.”
“Maryland man”? Check. “Wrongfully deported”? Check.
[…]
Shifting to NBC’s Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie said Van Hollen was “meeting in El Salvador with Maryland man whose mistaken deportation has taken center stage in that battle.”
Senior White House correspondent Garrett Haake gushed that “Garcia’s wife said overnight that her prayers have been answered now that she knows her husband is still alive, but he’s also still not coming back to Maryland.”
Acknowledging “the White House is embracing the political contrast created by this visit and those photos,” Haake called Van Hollen’s visit “proof of life” for Garcia.
[…]
CBS Mornings spent the least amount of time on Abrego Garcia at 91 seconds, but it still made sure to commiserate over him.
[…]
After quoting from a statement with his wife’s name on it, reaction from Bukele, and the White House blasting Van Hollen and Democrats as the party of illegal immigrants, he ended by insisting “Abrego Garcia’s legal team strongly denies any ties to MS-13” (despite the facts put out by the White House).
Houck didn’t detail what those “facts put out by the White House” supposedly are.
Tim Graham rehashed his subordinates’ previous narrative-pushing in his April 19 podcast:
The networks demonstrated biases by their choice of anecdotes. They completely skip murders by illegal aliens, like the newly convicted killer of Rachel Morin. Instead, they’ve gone all in to advocate for illegal alien Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, despite his gang connections and domestic-violence accusations. Geoffrey Dickens and Bill D’Agostino discuss their studies on the TV coverage.
Graham didn’t mention that those purported “gang connections” are dubious at best.
More freakouts
Finkelstein took this 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 deporting 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.
Houck was in full Trump Regime Media mode in the MRC’s final April 21 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.
More false conflation
Geoffrey Dickens reprised his employer’s false conflation of Abrego Garcia’s wrongful arrest and the death of a woman by an illegal immigrant:
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen’s shameless trip to El Salvador, to bring back illegal immigrant and accused MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia to his Maryland constituents, prompted the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks to extend their exhaustive “mistakenly” deported “Maryland man” coverage.
From April 1 through the morning of April 23, ABC, CBS, NBC jammed their evening and morning shows with a total of 143 minutes, 24 seconds devoted to Abrego Garcia.
ABC spent the most time (52 minutes, 32 seconds) on Kilmar Abrego Garcia. CBS came in second with 49 minutes, 26 seconds. NBC aired 41 minutes, 45 seconds on the deported man’s case.
Over that same time period, another Maryland illegal immigration case — the trial and April 14 conviction of the murderer of Rachel Morin — was almost completely ignored by the networks.
So how much time did the networks devote to the Morin case?
A pathetic 12 seconds.
[…]
Not even Rachel Morin’s mother’s condemnation of Sen. Van Hollen — in front of the White House press corps — could spike network coverage of her daughter’s tragic murder at the hands of an illegal immigrant.
However, Sen. Van Hollen’s political stunt did excite the networks.
Dickens failed to disclose that Morin’s death has nothing whatsoever with Abrego Garcia. He also did not explain his biased labeling — i.e., hyping Morin’s death as “tragic” while claiming thaf Van Hollen engaged in a “political stunt.”
Another post that day from Curtis Houck touted a claim by a fellow right-wing publication reporting that Abregbo Garcia “was driving an SUV in a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop ‘owned by a man who was himself deported after pleading guilty to smuggling illegal aliens in 2020.’” That was followed by Bill D’Agostino complaining that Arego Garcia’s lawyers “have sat for 28 friendly interviews on corporate media airwaves, or more than one per day,” going on to huff: “the leftist TV networks have pressed doggedly onward with his legal team’s free publicity tour. It looks like they feel too dug in to attempt an about-face.” But isn’t the MRC giving free coverage to Morin’s mother’s free publicity tour?
Clay Waters came out against due process in yet another April 24 post:
Wednesday’s PBS News Hour fretted over the “wrongful deportation” of the media’s favorite Maryland resident, illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, back to El Salvador, and suggested that it’s unconstitutional not to give every illegal immigrant a trial before deportation.
Wednesday’s PBS News Hour fretted over the “wrongful deportation” of the media’s favorite Maryland resident, illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, back to El Salvador, and suggested that it’s unconstitutional not to give every illegal immigrant a trial before deportation.
[…]
Is PBS being sloppy or did they truly suggest every illegal immigrant (out of the millions in America now) really require a trial before being deported? Talk about gumming up the deportation works.
Yeah, we wouldn’t want to be “gumming up the deportation works” with questions about people’s rights, would we?
Jorge Bonilla found even more illegal immigrants to falsely conflate to Abego Garcia in an April 25 post, even touting a Fox News report about it:
It happened again: an illegal alien, having settled in Maryland since crossing the border, committed a heinous and barbaric crime. And once again, the “Legacy Media” bite their collective tongues so as to avoid the indignity of having to report an inconvenient story.
[…]
Another fine, upstanding “Maryland Man” doing “Maryland Man” things, allegedly. The above Fox News report is the only newscast mention of this horrific murder. There was absolutely NOTHING reported about this crime on ABC, CBS, NBC.
Bonilla then lectured:
And it is, in a sense, understandable. Covering this murder at the hands of an illegal alien would’ve meant taking time away from the 97-year-old tortoise who became a first time mother, or Pope Francis’ favorite gelateria. Viewers emerged knowing that the pope preferred lemon and mango gelatos, but not knowing a thing about this horrific crime. Speaking of Francis, the fierce open-borders advocate, it is ironic that his passing essentially buried further coverage of the travails of the original “Maryland Man”, confirmed MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego García, detained in El Salvador.
The reason this story goes uncovered is the same reason the media clammed up once it was known that Laken Riley’s murderer was an illegal alien. From Venezuela. Who crossed the border illegally as part of the Biden Border Surge. And who was affiliated to the ultraviolent Tren de Aragua. This story is counternarrative and, much to the chagrin of the media, proves Donald Trump right.
Again, Bonilla offered no evidence Abrego Garcia is actually in MS-13, and he refused to admit that this death, like that of Rachel Morin, has absolutely nothing to do with Abrego Garcia. And it seems that Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation is an inconvenient story for him.
Waters raged that NPR covered the Abrego Garcia story:
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the infamous “Maryland Man” of media renown (who is actually an illegal immigrant and accused MS-13 gang member from El Salvador with no legal right to be in the United States) was the subject of yet another story on National Public Radio.
The online version of the radio report by Eric Westervelt and Joel Rose for NPR's All Things Considered Wednesday added some more sympathetic details to the Maryland man's media mythos -- he's just a quiet family man!
[…]
NPR used the word "illegal" once to describe how Garcia had been deported and once to admit "he entered the U.S. illegally." Let’s see how the following “living quietly in Maryland” description holds up to future scrutiny:
Of course, smearing Abrego Garcia as a “gangbanger” hasn’t exactly held up to scrutiny.