We haven’t seen Kilmar Abrego Garcia in the two weeks since Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen flew to see him where he’s being illegally imprisoned in El Salvador. Even though the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Trump administration, who originally admitted that Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador by mistake, had to facilitate his return. But instead of bringing him home, Trump & Co. fired the Justice Department lawyer who admitted to the mistake, and have been doubling down on the argument that Abrego Garcia is actually a violent MS-13 gang member because something something his tattoos! Now, in an interview with ABC News’ Terry Moran to mark the first 100 days of the sentence term, Trump sat in the Oval Office and insisted that an obviously photoshopped image of Abrego Garcia’s hand with “MS13” written across the knuckles, is real.
During an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News on Tuesday, President Trump insisted that the man his administration had mistakenly deported to El Salvador had a gang name tattooed on his hand.
“On his knuckles,” Mr. Trump said, “he had MS-13.”Pause the tape. Rewind it to about a week earlier, when Mr. Trump in a social post held up a photograph of the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, showing him with four tattoos, one on each finger. There was a leaf, a smiley face, a cross and a skull. Above those symbols the alphanumeric term “MS13” had been superimposed onto the photo, essentially serving as a caption, decoding the tattoos. (Some gang experts have questioned whether they are truly MS-13 symbols.)
In the interview with Mr. Moran, the president appeared to believe that the characters that had been typed onto the photo he triumphantly held up in his social media post were in fact tattoos themselves. Mr. Moran gingerly tried to correct the record about that, but Mr. Trump was having none of it.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Hey, Terry. Terry. Terry.”
Mr. Moran tried again: “He did not have the letter —”
“Don’t do that,” Mr. Trump cut in. “M-S-1-3. It says M-S-1-3.”
When Mr. Moran said that those characters had been photoshopped onto the picture, Mr. Trump looked positively mutinous. The exchange went around and around as the president continued to claim, with increasing exasperation, that these numbers and letters that he so badly wanted the world to see did in fact exist in ink on this man’s knuckles.
He could not bring himself to admit that Mr. Abrego Garcia did not have the words “MS-13” tattooed on his hand.“Why don’t you just say, ‘Yes, he does,’” Mr. Trump finally said to Mr. Moran, “and, you know, go on to something else.”
Asked about the exchange on Wednesday, Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, asserted that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s tattoos were the insignia of the violent gang. But Mr. Desai declined to answer questions about why Mr. Trump would not accept that Mr. Abrego Garcia does not in fact have “MS-13” tattooed on his hand, and that the photograph Mr. Trump had posed with in his social media post had been altered…
“The ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York — a place he has never lived,” Judge Paula Xinis wrote in an order this month.
The Trump administration has increasingly zeroed in on tattoos when identifying Venezuelan migrants as gang members who could be deported to the prison in El Salvador. Immigration officials have cited markings like crowns and clocks as evidence of membership in Tren de Aragua, the transnational gang with roots in Venezuela. In an effort to determine the gang affiliation of the migrants, the Homeland Security Department created a scorecard and assigned the men points for different aspects of their tattoos. Having tattoos associated with the gang was worth four points. A tally of eight points was considered evidence of gang membership.
Nothing about this situation is funny, but I guffawed out loud when I saw the image in question. It is so patently fake! For one thing, the color of what’s supposed to be the “MS13” tat is darker than the ink of Abrego Garcia’s other, genuine tattoos and the “MS13” is so clearly flat/two-dimensional. It stands out even more starkly when right next to the real tattoos that stretch and go in and out of light. The most obvious explanation is that they are labels meant to identify his existing tattoos as an excuse for kidnapping him. However no one will admit that Trump is insisting these labels are the tattoos. As always with this administration, their evil is matched by their incompetence and stupidity.
Honestly, if you think the M S 1 3 here is not just superimposed, I'm afraid there is no hope for you. https://t.co/1zlteXh8RS pic.twitter.com/fmq35jRdYQ
— Micah Erfan (@micah_erfan) April 30, 2025
I just want to point out that “You’re not being nice!” is also something that my 3 year old says to me when she isn’t getting her own way.
Le sigh. Not only this is the darkest timeline, it’s also the stupidest.
He may act like a toddler, but the damage he’s causing is horrific. A tattoo point system to decide if a life is ruined. That is NOT due process.
Does he also think Abrego Garcia has “marijuana, smile, cross, skull” tattooed in tiny script to conveniently label each of the pictures? This is the first time I’ve seen the picture because I try not to engage in every outrageously stupid thing T**mp says and does, but c’mon! That is 1) obviously fake and 2) tattoos are not evidence of guilt. I know a youth pastor who has Marvin the Martian tattooed on his back and a suburban dad who has “ride or die” tattooed on his thigh. Proof of impulsive youth, not obsession with Marvin or bike gang membership.
is the whole thing that these symbols STAND for “MS13” based on intelligence the government has on this gang…and THAT is what the president was trying to get at?
not defending him at all, but if this was the point he was trying to make its pretty scary how he can’t get a point across to anybody, he just says whatever comes to mind first, with as few words as possible, and then whines back and forth with others until they’re both frustrated.
this is so embarassing.
If you watch, he repeatedly says that the letters and numbers are actually on the knuckle. He spells it out, literally, and says those things are in fact on the knuckle. The interviewer tries to say no, those aren’t, but one could interpret the symbols as gang related but he won’t accept that. He insists the actual numbers and letters are on the guy’s knuckles.
More concerning is that he is telling a legit reporter to just “say yes” and agree with something that the reporter knows is not true. When the reporter won’t do that but tries to just move on, he is told that he is not “being nice”. It’s an interview of the president and a real news agency and he just expects them to agree with him and be nice! That is not normal and he should never be given the benefit of the doubt.
Thats how ai took it. I am not saying it is MS13 tattoo (I have no idea) but I’m taking that image/explanation to say that those symbols correspond to those letters/numbers. According to whom? Is it right? No idea. But if Trump really thinks it does say “M” “S” “1” “3”, then there is no hope. Don’t even have to do deepfakes if that’s how gullible people are
I used to teach massage therapy. Students all saw 98% of eacthothers. bodies. On day one, this white man took me aside, very distraught, and said he had spent a few years in prison when he was much younger and was covered in white pride/nazi tattoos but no longer associated with this ideology, He explained that in prison, you are practically forced to choose a gang for protection. I asked him if he was comfortable explaining this to his cohort, and he did. This was in SF, and there were students from many races, socioeconomic backgrounds, ages, and education levels. His apology and explanation were sincere and everyone in the class took him for his word. It’s been decades since this happened, and I hadn’t given it much thought since. But lately, I think about it a lot.
I believe you. Sounds quite plausible. People do what they have to do to survive prison.
That clip was just bizarre. Once Trump gets something in his head, there’s no convincing him otherwise.
I just want to say something about Terry. He is a respected journalist who has been around for decades. This idiot thinks he’s new to the job and should be lucky he chose him to do the interview. Pfffttt.
I think the photoshop fail was supposed to be labels but Trump is just too dumb to go with that point. Also there was a man who specializes in gang history on twitter who said that he had no idea how they were getting “MS13” from the drawings anyway. Those people are the stupidest and they think we are more stupid than they are.
Like anybody gets tattoos in Times New Roman or whatever font that is… And oh my GOD the mental disorder of this man-baby who can not be confronted by anything other than his made-up fantasy world! The psychiatric dissertations that will be written on this disordered failure who can only ever hear how pretty and strong he is are going to be epic.
He will always double-down and not a single one of his “advisors” or “friends” will contradict him. When will someone get dragged in for ignoring court orders.
Who came up with the labels + the tattoo-interpretation scheme? Has the interpretation been verified?
We’re f*cked.
I’m convinced the jerk needs glasses, but is too vain to admit it.
Trump and his administration, I’ve said this before, they’re all digging their hole deeper. Their fake news and misinformation is going to eventually wind down. AI is rapidly getting more and more accelerated and more people are getting their data from all these AI tools. Even my own employer is training everyone this year on the different co-pilots. And for the most part even Grok is giving facts. Which MAGAs don’t like the AI answers at all 😄 cause it’s the truth.