MS Paint-13 and our Dumbass President

 

TRUMP: He had MS-13 on his knuckles, tattooed!

MORAN: That was photoshopped

TRUMP: Terry, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime. I picked you. But you're not being very nice. pic.twitter.com/NgCpEB8o1S

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 30, 2025

I was certain that Trump was cynically using visual propaganda in a way that took advantage of the utter dupes and dopes that are his people, but the above interview snippet sure does look like someone showed Trump the picture of the knuckle tattoos, helpfully Photoshopped so that he would understand the interpretation of them, and took it to be, uh, part of the picture.  

People around him are offering cynical visual propaganda to use, but he's such a Fox News pilled dopey old grandpa, he believes what he's being told to say.

We saw this just earlier in his Time Magazine interview as well:

"That's not what my people told me--they didn't say it was, they said it was--the nine to nothing was something entirely different."

Yeah. Sometimes his people don't tell him anything, and sometimes they completely lie to his big stupid face, apparently. 

Dictators Sure Do Love Their Propaganda

 

All the world is a stage, including social media (maybe especially there):

There was the pool furniture in the background. There were the tropical drinks, which looked to be margaritas garnished with cherries. And then there were the deported prisoner and the American senator, sitting and chatting.

That senator, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, accused El Salvador’s government on Friday of aiming to paint the picture of a leisurely respite for the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia by staging their meeting with drinks appearing to be alcohol, and angling to set the meeting by a hotel pool.

Van Hollen referred to the stagecraft with a term that had ricocheted around social media for much of the day: “Margaritagate.”

“Nobody drank any margaritas or sugar water or whatever it is,” the Democratic senator said, calling the whole situation “a lesson” in “the lengths that President Bukele will do to deceive people about what’s going on.”

Dictators dare you to ignore the context and accept their frames. Are their images improbable or too good/convenient to be true?

Well: 

Juris Doctor Vance, Not So Young, Also Not Credible

 

While we can tell ourselves that part of Karoline Leavitt's juvenile dissembling attempts are sheer youth and immaturity, we know for sure that Vice-Signaling Junior President Vance "tells stories" with a purpose. So, when he condescendingly insults a reporter for not having read a court document--I don't even assume the JD Vance was simply mistaken and responding in a hurry when he got the basic details entirely wrong. 

JD Vance is a Yale Law grad and quite capable of seeing whether or not Kilmar Abrego Garcia was convicted of or merely accused of being a member of MS-13. It seems to me he counts on MAGA not reading, and only superficially noticing a lot of liberals telling Vance he's wrong (which he is) and assuming they are "triggered."

Trans de Agua

 

Pam Bondi calls Tren de Aragua "trans de agua" pic.twitter.com/2wLfuhKPHq

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 20, 2025

February 20, 2025

So, a funny/not funny thing happened in Colorado, where conservatives made up a thing where Venezuelan gangs were taking up whole blocks of apartments. Which meant of course, if that were true, the first place ICE would have to raid would be those occupied dangerous gang apartment scary no-go zones, right?

Right?

Well, they did! And SOMEHOW, everyone and their mother found out about it, and the op was even delayed for a bit? (Even though ICE raids are basically, just like, Tuesday, even during the Biden Administration.) But then they did the thing, with hundreds of guys. Like, a whole multi-agency thing. 

Anyway, I guess everything was very disappointing for the Trump Administration, because maybe there weren't as many arrests as they hoped? So they sacked the experienced acting head of ICE. People figuring out there would be a stepped-up ICE presence out there was definitely the result of "leaks". And Kristi Noem is ready to get out the polygraph tests to sniff out the real problem in why deportation preparations have broken down, promising to get you and your little dog too if you were a DHS employee responsible for leaking. (I may have made that last bit up.)

This Waco Rampage Worries Me

Although it seems like we're in the "aftermath" stage of the violent skirmish between rival biker gangs at the Twin Peaks restaurant that claimed 9 lives and left another 18 injured, I am a little fearful for people, especially law enforcement, in the area.

Just looking at what took place, law enforcement had provided warning beforehand that there was liable to be a problem at the "Confederation of Clubs" taking place there, and the alert continues to be high, especially for anyone in a uniform--but to be honest, if I were in the area and thought there might be another shootout as a civilian, I'd be pretty damned alarmed.

It strikes me as a bizarre scene--described by one officer as "the worst crime scene" he'd ever seen--but the backdrop is an entirely familiar-looking suburban strip mall. It seems like such a bizarre venue to be the host of violent potential. Which makes me wonder a bit at the sense of the Twin Peaks chain restaurant (which appears to be losing their franchise license) to host the event when there were warnings. We don't have this chain in my area, but I understand they are kind of like "Hooters" in that they cater to a sort of man-cave idea of a place just for things "guys" like. So maybe the idea of a biker "club" event seemed to the management to be apropos.

This was a mistaken point of view. There's a certain "romance" involved with biker life, I think, that we get mostly from movies. I think there is a romance we get with the idea of "the outlaw" in general--wild west desperados, thug life, Goodfellas and the Sopranos. Bonnie and Clyde. But when you see images of the crowd (from which 170 people have now been arrested) and start picking out things like white supremacist tats, you start to realize these are not just manly men who ride bikes. The Bandidos are like a motorcycle mafia. A whole lot of weapons were confiscated, which strikes me as meaning people were expecting to see some damage.

With so many members of one percenter gangs held with high bonds, I kind of feel wary--like something else will drop. This isn't a demographic that shies away from violent confrontation.