Bulwark Takes - Brutal New 60 Minutes Report Exposes Trump Admin Crimes

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Tim Miller reacts to a devastating new report from 60 Minutes, revealing even more details of the shocking treatment of Venezuelan migrants detained by the Trump administration in El Salvador and highlighting the Trump officials responsible. Watch the 60 Minutes report: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/photojournalist-witnesses-venezuelan-migrants-arrival-in-el-salvador-60-minutes/ Get in touch with your elected officials and demand they help stop this atrocity: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark. I just finished watching this harrowing 60-minute segment on the Venezuelans that we have disappeared into this concentration camp, Sakat, outside of San Salvador. And they had new images, new interviews with people who have relationships with either lawyers or family members with the Venezuelans that we have sent there. And taken as a whole,

like the story continues to me to be the most outrageous thing that has happened during Trump 2.0. Something that is beyond comprehension in a free country. Something that is maybe among the worst things that this country has ever done in a long time. So I want to talk particularly about a couple of the details. And this segment focuses on the man that I've been talking about a lot on this show, even though it seems like there are many others like him, Andri, the stylist who was disappeared, who had no criminal background, who the court documents that give a rationalization for the government's claim that he is in Trinidad and Tobago just show two images of his tattoos because they're crowns. They have his parents' name underneath them, an absurd rationale. There are some quasi-new developments with Andri, and so I want to share a little bit from 60 Minutes.

But Andri did appear in photos taken by Time magazine photographer Philip Holsinger, who was there when the Venezuelans arrived at Secote. Holsinger told us he heard a young man say, I'm not a gang member, I'm gay, I'm a stylist. And then he cried for his mother as he was slapped and had his head shaved. By comparing Holsinger's photographs to photos of Andri's tattoos taken by the government, we were able to confirm that this is Andri. His lawyer, who was representing him pro bono,

had never seen these photos before. It's horrifying to see someone who we've met and know as a sweet, funny artist in the most horrible conditions I could imagine. The pictures of him that they showed on the TV, naked, stripped naked, they could identify him. The lawyer could identify him because she could see his tattoos, the way that he was treated, the testimony of Holsinger, that he kept getting slapped. He was praying, crying for his mother.

I think about how desperate of a situation that you have to be in to think that saying I'm gay would help. And obviously, you know, that is just going to draw more attention to you, get you targeted more. But he's just so desperate. He's trying anything. He how could this be this is such a mistake how could this be me and you say and you see holzinger talk about how he you know like the way they shaved his head and it was rough and it hurt um Like, it is just, like, we did that. We did that. And I want to get to another clip, actually, before I really rant about this. 60 Minutes shows a couple quotes from Tricia McLaughlin, who used to be Vivek's spokesperson.

I've met her a couple times. She is a spokesperson for the DHS. I want to play with the government's responses to this. A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said on social media that its intelligence assessments go well beyond just gang affiliate tattoos. She said Andri's own social media indicates he is a member of Tren de Aragua. The Trump administration is pretty free with accusations when it comes to these men who are fleeing terror, who are just trying to come to the land of milk and honey for a chance to live a free life. They've got a lot of accusations.

They call them rapists. They say they're brutal gang members. They're violent. They're terrible. A lot of aspersions cast with no evidence from the administration. But here's what I see. What I see is everyone involved in this, from Kristi Noem to Trisha McLaughlin to Stephen Miller to Tom Homan, based on the evidence presented, they are the terrorists here they are the kidnappers

they are the people that are going to be responsible for surely physical and emotional trauma that will follow these men for life at a fucking minimum they are responsible for the most horrific trauma imaginable being inflicted on these people. They are responsible for disappearing them without the ability to call their mother or father or family. They're responsible for having men with hoods and masks shackling them to the ground and forcing them to submit. They're responsible for these men being terrorized. Maybe some of them deserve it. I don't know. We don't know. Trisha had said that the social media feed was the evidence that they had that Andri

was Trend de Aragua. Let's play this bit from 60 Minutes. We went back a decade and could only find photos like these. So you go, they looked at 10 years of his social media feed, and do you know what they saw? Him looking like a fucking game, you magician. Like, are you kidding me? That person is Trend de Aragua?

That person was so dangerous that you had to forcibly remove him, shackle him, disappear him with no contact with his family? Make him live in this fucking concentration camp in this hole in another country that he's never been to? That man? Show up the picture again. Put up the picture again. This guy, really? Tricia? Really, Steven? Really, Tom? Really, Christy? Really, Donald Trump? That man was so dangerous to this country that we sent him to one of the worst prisons that I've ever seen in my life video from? We're torturing him? And your evidence is trust us?

No, fuck you. No. Don't trust the government. You serve us. You show it. There's a bonus clip from Phillips Holsinger that I want to play. It's pretty tough to watch, but since he's the one that actually got to see these guys. But let's watch it.

Life in the cell in Saccot is the definition of austerity. The bunks are steel. There are no blankets. There are no pillows. There's nothing. It's just a slab of metal. And that's where you sleep. There are no books.

There's no television. Zero outside communication. Nothing goes out. Nothing comes in. There's 24-hour surveillance. No misbehaving, no talking. The first time I visited Sikot, I was shocked by the silence. The silence is what really got under my skin.

And then they go right into a room where they shave everybody's head. And they don't shave their heads, you know, tenderly. The guards are just, you know, fast, fast, fast, rapidu, rapidu, rapid know, tenderly. The guards are just, you know, fast, fast, fast, rapido, rapido, rapido, rapido. So some of them are nicking their heads. This man really grabbed my attention. He may be a criminal. He may be innocent.

He may be a father. I don't know his story at all, but I know his eyes. He didn't fight. Hopelessness just gave in. As he took the last few photographs before the Venezuelans were transported to their cells, Holsinger said he felt he had watched these men become ghosts. They've been stripped of their hair and their clothes, and they don't know where they're going. All of their personality was gone. Your life just ceased to exist. You're just a person in white clothes now. And I had this sort of sense of, I'm watching these guys disappear. Hopelessness just gave in. I felt like I was watching them disappear. it's got to be a really high bar for the government in a free country

to decide that they can make somebody disappear into a foreign hellhole where they are given no access to the outside world, where they are forced to be silent, where they cannot speak, where they are brutalized, where they have nam to be silent where they cannot speak where they are brutalized where they have nameless faceless robocop guards as if this is some fucking futuristic nazi camp every one of those guys better been a fucking gang member and a rapist because doing that doing that to somebody taking away their humanity, because that is what our government has done. It has taken away the humanity from people that just wanted an opportunity to live free.

That was the fundamental thing about our country. That was the element here that mattered, right? Because in America, America, we're not, this country is not about just the ground that we're on, because it wasn't our ground. We all came from different places you know it's not like we're not hungry i know that they want us to be we're not a common language and a common food culture and a common history it's not us we all come from different places we're a gumbo and the thing that ties it all together, the thing that is fundamental about America is that here, people that came here, people that followed the rules,

had a chance to live a life of purpose and meaning to be free. That's what this country is about. And we have snuffed that out. live a life of purpose and meaning to be free. That's what this country is about. And we have snuffed that out from these people. Ones like Andre that according to his lawyer who's doing a great, unbelievable work. Ones like Andre who came here and came to a port of entry and tried to follow the rules and did a pre-interview and,

you know, we've snuffed it out. We've said this fundamentally American thing is gone, that we are no different from the jackals, that we will just on a whim, take someone and send him to a foreign dungeon to rot. That is not a free country. That is not the America that I grew up in. It's a very different place. And if we cannot rally to

stop this right now with the Venezuelans, then things are going to get a lot uglier from here. So anyway, thanks to 60 Minutes for their reporting. Thanks to Lindsay Teslosky, the attorney for Andre. Please go watch the full segment. There are a couple of other stories that are just as harrowing. And subscribe to the feed. We'll be back here soon.