Fireworks were flying in the Oval Office Monday afternoon as President Trump met with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, but it was nothing at all like the time Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, used a White House photo op to escalate tensions with the administration. Instead, Trump, Bukele and a host of Trump administration officials teamed up to destroy the false media narrative surrounding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the El Salvadoran illegal who was deported from the United States and is now doing time at the infamous CECOT mega prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador.
Flanked by their respective national security teams, Trump and Bukele laid down some hard truths for CNN’s Kaitlan Collins—or, as Trump called her, “a very low-rated anchor”—after she asked President Trump if he’d be seeking Bukele’s help in returning the “mistakenly deported” Abrego Garcia to the U.S. The question kicked off a whip around of Trump administration officials lighting into the media for failing to properly cover the story of an illegal being returned to his home country and the associated judicial rulings.
First up was Attorney General Pam Bondi, who alerted Kaitlan Collins to the fact that, “First and foremost, he was in our country illegally.” Then came the legal truths: “In 2019, two courts, an immigration court and an appellate immigration court, ruled he was a member of MS-13, and he was illegally in our country.” Bondi noted that is was now up to El Salvador, not the United States, to decide if they want to return him, stating that the U.S. would help “facilitate” that return by providing an airplane.
President Trump then threw the matter over to White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, who was fresh off a thrashing of Fox News’ Bill Hemmer after Hemmer pursued a line of questioning similar to that of CNN’s Collins. Miller got in a nice little dig at Collins over her apparent lack of knowledge regarding the Immigration and Nationality Act, which was enacted back in 1952.
Finally, it was President Bukele’s turn to address the matter, telling Collins that her question was “preposterous” and that he has no intention of smuggling a terrorist back into the United States.