Bulwark Takes - JD Vance's Late Night Tweet Was Just God Awful

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

J.D. Vance stirred controversy by defending the deportation of a man sent to El Salvador despite judicial warnings of torture risk. Sam Stein and Andrew Eggar examine the facts behind Vance’s tweet, exploring the broader implications for immigration policy, due process, and human rights. Morning Shots: Innocent (in a Brutal Prison) Abroad https://www.thebulwark.com/p/innocent-brutal-prison-abroad-deportation-ms-13-court-salvador Tim Video: This Isn’t a Mistake — It’s Evil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LScwsPP9oc

Hey guys, me, Sam Stein, Managing Editor at The Bulwark. I'm here with Andrew Egger, author of Morning Shots. We're here to talk about the latest indignity in the Trump deportation regime. Andrew wrote about it this morning. It involves a story that broke last night that you probably read or saw Tim talk about. The story's in Atlantic. I want to make sure I'm getting this right. A man named Kilmer Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador despite a judge's ruling that he should not be deported there. He was sent to the prison there. The judge was just saying don't send him there because there's a credible threat that he would be subjected to persecution and torture. We're not going to rehash necessarily everything that Tim talked about in this video from last night. I just encourage you to go watch the video. It's really good. What we're going to talk about is something Andrew

observed up close, which is how Republicans have been reacting to any time that you point out that maybe, just maybe, they should, you know, dot their I's, cross their T's and go through the due process process and make sure that everything's OK before sending people to these deportation camps, whatever you want to call them, prisons in El Salvador. Before we get into it, subscribe to our feed. Critical content like this. All right, Andrew, two things I want to talk about. First is J.D. Vance. We have a vice president who is chronically online. I should not talk because I'm chronically online too, but I'm also not the vice president. And here J.D. was this morning

or late last night tweeting at anyone or people who were critical of the administration for abducting Obrego Garcia and sending him to El Salvador. And can you summarize what Vance is doing here, the argument he's making and just the validity of it? Yeah, this is sort of a bewildering thing where because he's the most online member of the administration, he is often the first to react to some of the, I mean like the, of the principles of the principles. Uh, yeah, sure. Sure.

Elon is more on Elon's more online than anybody, JD, but Elon has his own little idiosyncratic things, right? A lot of times, like the first kind of like institutional response, like how, how the white house is going to spin a certain thing.

A lot of times that's coming from Vance first. Cause he's on Twitter. He's mixing it up. The story broke late last night. He's on, on Twitter at 1am and he posts this, uh, you know,

he's, he's, he's chirping at a pod. Save America's Jon Favreau, who's like, hey, you just deported this guy. A judge said you couldn't. You have admitted in court that it was an error to deport him, and yet you're saying that the say-so of DHS, and you can't get him back, and the court can't make you get him back, and still DHS should be the sole authority you know,

authority on who gets deported these places and who doesn't. But but but JD says, according to the court document, you apparently didn't read he the man who was deported against the judge's order was a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here. My further comment is that it's gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize. So two things about this. One is on the merits. It's wrong. Back in 2019, what happened to this guy was, you know, some of the details vary according to whether you're listening to his lawyer or, you know, DHS lawyers. But but what what seems like factually happened is pretty clear. He was at in a Home Depot parking lot, you know, waiting to get day labor or work.

He got scooped up by local cops with a couple of other people. One of those people told that local cop, hey, this guy, he's an MS-13. He's a gang member. That was never additionally substantiated in any way. Like there was never anything like to prove that. And they never backed that up. But when it came time to, you know, look at this guy for federal deportation proceedings, he was handed over to DHS. DHS then files with the judge, well, we have a confidential source, this local cop, who tells us this guy is an MS-13 gang member. It's the only piece of information that's ever been- But TLDR, he was never convicted of being- A judge said he could, in theory, be deported, but that they were blocking him from being deported.

Anyone here illegally could, in theory, be deported, but that they were blocking him from being deported. Anyone here illegally could in theory be deported. It's not exactly an exceptional conclusion. And to JD's specific thing, never convicted of anything. So he calls him a convicted MS-13 gang member. Just not true. But then the other interesting thing is the pivot, right? My further comment is that it's gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize. And this is just becoming the administration's stock response. Obviously, this guy's story just broke overnight, but there have been lots of reports in recent days of people getting swept up in this Trinidad-Iragua drag net and just shipped down to El Salvador, a lot of whom seem to have no real connections with Trinidad-Iragua. And people are saying, well, okay, first of all, you're doing a really sloppy job.

And second of all, you know, sloppy job or not, isn't this a crazy process that there is that you are bypassing the immigration courts, you're not talking to these people's lawyers, you're not doing any of that stuff. You're just scooping people off off the street that you think are gang members, and sending them off. And isn't that kind of crazy, even if you were, you know, dotting your eyes and crossing your T's? To me, this is a lot of echoes here to what happened in the aftermath of 9-11, honestly, which was, you know,

people were very anxious about the actions the Bush administration was taking with respect to people who were captured on the battlefield. Obviously, a huge scandal with Abu Ghraib, bringing prisoners to Guantanamo Bay. And then if you were to raise those concerns, the stock response to the administration was, you know, you're sympathizing with, you know, alleged terrorists.

In this case, they would drop alleged. And I see that not just in J.D. Vance's tweet, but what happened to you on the Hill yesterday, where you were just going around and talking to different Republican lawmakers, and you were getting basically the same stock response from them. The lawmakers kind of went one of two directions. They would either say, look, you know, this is going to be up to the courts to decide whether the Supreme Court has this power. And they would just kind of like try to be quiet and leave it at that. One guy I talked to who went a different direction, much more in line with the rhetoric we've been hearing from the administration was Senator Ted Cruz. And we can play the audio of that.

You know, it's not surprising that the bulwark's focus is defending alleged Venezuelan gang members. Yeah, isn't that actually kind of the question, though? I mean, like, shouldn't there be some adversarial process? Let me ask you something. How many stories did you write on the Venezuelan gang members that Joe Biden, the Democrats released that were murdering and raping Americans? I wrote on immigration quite a bit, but you didn't answer my question. If you want to be a shill for violent gang members, listen, I've talked to too many Americans whose children were raped and murdered by these animals that you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Yeah. So, I mean, essentially what he's doing is exactly the same thing, right? He's taking any question about this due process. And

he's obviously specifically also going after the bulwark, but he's really he's flipping it around on its on its head. Right. I mean, he's saying, look, like, the question is, should we be able to be assured that the administration is only scooping up gang members? Shouldn't there be some kind of process for determining whether these people are who you say they are? And the response to that is just, well, I can't believe you'd stick up for gang members like that. But no, I mean, it's like, everyone wants to see violent gang members deported, imprisoned, whatever. It's a sophomoric response. It's so simple. Obviously, people don't want to have gang members roaming around our country, right? Like, no one is arguing that. What we are arguing for is some sort of, you know, guardrails against

putting innocent people into prison camps, which doesn't seem like that strong an ask. And it's not, we should be really clear, this is not a one-off response. This is the administration bedrock argument. I mean, the press secretary was out yesterday. There was a clip that went a little bit viral of a reporter, Andrew Feinberg of The Independent. He had DHS documents in his hand. Here's the reporter brandishing the document in her face, and here's how she responds to that. to be classified as a TDA member. You can get classified by simply having certain symbols in your tattoos and wearing certain streetwear brands. That alone is enough to get someone classified as TDA and sent to El Salvador.

That's not true, actually, Andrew. According to this document, it is. No, according to the Department of Homeland Security and the agents. Have you talked to the agents who have been putting their lives on the line to detain these foreign terrorists who have been terrorizing our communities? TDA is a vicious gang that has taken the lives of American women. And our agents on the front lines take up deporting these people with the utmost seriousness and there is a litany of criteria that they use to ensure that these individuals qualify as foreign terrorists and and to ensure to ensure that they qualify for deportation and the president made it

incredibly clear to the american public that there would be a mass deportation campaign of not just foreign terrorists but also illegal criminal aliens who have been wreaking havoc on american communities and shame on you and shame on the mainstream media for trying to cover for these individuals who have this is a vicious gang andrew this is a vicious gang that has taken the lives of american women the government filed in court which says all And you said yourself there are there are eight criteria on that document. And you are questioning the credibility of these agents who are putting their life on the line to protect your life and the life of everybody in this group and everybody across the country. And their credibility should be questioned. They finally have a president

who is allowing them to do their jobs and God bless them for doing it. And so just like to put a fine point on it, like, yes, this is a vicious gang that has taken the lives of American women. Yes. But the whole question is the whole like point of the whole thing is, are these human beings, the ones that you are scooping up and sending to El Salvador, are they in that gang? Have they done these things? Right. That's the question. Because if they're not, then it's a big problem. Right. I mean, and so it's just it's it's this whole it goes around and around and around. And that's the way they're going to respond to these stories. rises to a significant level for them to at least put in some guardrails or acknowledge that they, you know, there are a need for guardrails. And, you know, when you went to the Hill,

we were kind of curious, you and I talked about it, like, well, maybe some of the more civil, civil libertarian minded lawmakers will be queasy about this. And we also talked a little bit about how among conservative commentators and non-political minded commentators, people like Joe Rogan, for instance, there was some queasiness about this, if not outright recognition that this is wrong. Are we at a place culturally where you can sense the tides shifting here? So there definitely has been a shift. I think Rogan is really striking. I mean, I, you, you, you mentioned like some of the guys at National Review or whatever are kind of knitting their brows over this and like, yeah, I'm good,

good for them. I'm glad they're doing that. But like somebody like Joe Rogan, who's like in that sort of populist, very popular broad space is more significant. I think the reason, the way that the White House miscalculated on this is they picked this fight, right? They were saying, we're going to make this thing, these Venezuelan migrants, the tip of the spear here in the due process thing. And it's going to be an 80-20 issue for us because we're going after these gang members. But I think that the way they miscalculated is they've just gone about it so buffoonishly and swept up so many people in this dragnet who are obviously you know wrong that like that is what's creating the public pressure i don't know if they've miscalculated i honestly i mean i obviously believe they've miscalculated but yeah it might not be 80 20 anymore but it well i just mean you know i think the country by and large at this point is very much and comfortable with this they're comfortable with certain i mean they're comfortable with people who are gang members. But I think that what I'm talking about is these edge cases that have made so much... Yeah, but I don't know. Are the edge cases

breaking through? I don't know. I mean, where would they be breaking through if not on Joe Rogan? I mean, he speaks exactly to that face. A one-off from Rogan is one thing. Yeah, no, and we'll see how this plays out. But like, look, look, you know, it's nobody ever lost their shirt betting against like or betting on the Trump administration to double down, betting on things like ultimately working out OK for them.

But like the only point I'm making here is that this is not the fight they wanted to pick. They did not want to be in the trenches having to defend, having to like I mean, they admitted in court that they deported this guy in error. Right. I mean, that's not a place that they wanted to be in. That's a huge black eye for them. And that's the reason why they are diverting and trying to dodge back to this thing. The only thing I would add is that, you know, it's very evident, and we've reported on this, Adrian reported on this, that Democrats are like not really eager to pick up this fight because they view it as a loser. But that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. They view everything as a loser. They're just a self-fulfilling prophecy. They view everything as a loser.

They're just, they're scared of it. Almost everything. They want to talk about the price of eggs, but guess what? The price of eggs are actually going down. So you can't do that one anymore. Democrats,

maybe talk about some of this other stuff. That's real. I don't know. I don't know. My point is it's self-fulfilling. If you don't talk about it, it doesn't turn into an issue because you've conceded it already. So have the courage of your convictions,

people. Yeah, exactly. All right, Andrew, thank you for your service and your reporting. I really appreciate it. Thank you guys for watching the video. We appreciate it as well. As a reminder, do subscribe to the feed. It is one of the best out there, if I must say so.

We will be in touch. Talk to you soon.