I hope everybody had a great Easter, or Passover, or regular spring weekend.
My theme today is the addition of a new category of stories for this and future columns: The “Democrats’ Backing the Wrong Horse” stories. In some of these, the elite left chooses as “villains” those who are later vindicated or otherwise come out on top. Examples would include Kyle Rittenhouse, Daniel Penny and the Covington school kids, as well as Trump himself, who overcame lawfare, the Russian hoax and two assassination attempts to win a second non-consecutive term.
But there’s another sub-category that is on my mind today – probably because I’ve spent much of this last week contemplating an actual Sinless Victim (He is risen! Best. Happy. Ending. Ever!) – and that’s the faux victim. I’m calling these guys the Democrats’ “Self-Detonating Heroes.”
These are typically chosen for their credentials as righteous sufferers at the hands of the left’s preferred bad guys (cops, conservatives, white people, Americans, etc.), and their stories usually fit the pattern known in journalism as “too good to check.”
You’ll recognize the common tropes: honor student gunned down by cops for no reason. Palestinian social worker blown up by genocidal IDF for no reason. Peaceful protestor arrested for no reason. Noble immigrant deported for no reason.
A very small number of these stories are valid, but those are the rare exceptions. When most people hear the initial report, they’ve learned to start an internal countdown to the moment when the story blows up.
The honor student shot by cops… (3…2…1…)… had gotten out of jail (again!) 14 hours ago, was driving a stolen car, and fired at cops with a stolen gun.
The “Palestinian social worker”… (3…2…1…)…was a Hamas member who had murdered several Jewish hippie girls at a music festival, and was wearing a suicide vest.
The “peaceful protestor” … (3…2…1…) … recorded himself setting fire to a police station.
The “noble immigrant” … (3…2…1…) … had been deported twice before and was carrying a duffel bag full of fentanyl and burner phones.
The beauty of these stories is watching the whole rotten scheme blow up in the Dems’ faces, over and over again, without them learning the lesson. No matter how unlikely the tale, and how often similar tales have left them with gunpowder-blackened faces and burnt-off eyebrows before, they take the bait again.
“Hey, a disgruntled black activist at a super-liberal university says someone spray painted the N word on her dorm room door? Stop the presses! Or refresh the website, or whatever.”
Annndddd… she sprayed the slur on her own door.
“Wow, some rednecks hung a noose on a black NASCAR driver’s garage? Swarm!”
Annnddd… it’s a looped rope used to pull down a garage door.
“Listen to this: some evil nerd hacked into Joy Reid’s computer and posted a bunch of homophobic slurs to frame her! Alert the FBI!”
Annnddd… Joy Reid posted a bunch of homophobic slurs, because she’s an evil, lying moron.
Perhaps the archetypal example of a leftist Self-Detonating Hero story is happening right now, and stars “Maryland father” Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
As usual, the Dems should have had their heads on a swivel with this guy. But once again the bait was too tempting, and when the Trump administration admitted that he’d been “wrongly deported” to the Salvadoran Super Max prison, the left was all over the story like white on Liz Warren.
(#wemustneverstopmockingher)
The first red flag should have been Kilmar’s name. There’s an old Latin phrase – “nomen est omen” – which roughly means that a name can be a sign. (Famous examples abound, e.g. once you’ve heard “Anthony Weiner” and “Charles Blow” you know everything you need to know about those dudes.)
Sound out “Kilmar” and you’ve got “kill” and “mar” (meaning “to spoil, harm or injure something or someone.”) So, yeah. His best friends were probably “Stab-lacerate Gonzalez” and “Punch-injure Herrera.”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect that some devious spy in Trump-world must have searched the records of thousands of illegal gangbangers, and then chose Kilmar as their trap for the Dems. They looked over his bio, and then hustled him onto the plane to El Salvador, then disregarded President Boasberg’s direct order to turn the plane around. They did all this knowing the left’s penchant for a sympathetic, underdog David figure, especially when he’s facing off against the orange Goliath!
So the Dems ran to the cameras and bet big on their new Salvadoran thoroughbred. “Kilmar is a loving husband to an American citizen, and a father to two American kids, and probably a devout Catholic, as far as you know. And sure, he’s got a couple of tattoos, but one of them is probably Christ on the cross (it’s very blurry in pictures, so we’re not 100% sure about that). And he had a judge’s order that he NOT be deported!”
“Ooh, look, his broken-hearted wife is stepping up to the microphone. Listen as she speaks in a wavering voice about the saintly man whom the Trumpian stormtroopers kidnapped off the street and then sent to Auschwitz II, trampling all of the constitutional rights that he definitely has as practically an almost American citizen! Oh, now she’s crying! Are you proud of yourselves, conservative bullies who ripped this loving family man away from his family? He has kids. American citizen kids! Won’t somebody think of the children?!”
And then the Mar-a-Lago Mata Hari (old timey spy reference for $100, Alex) began to release successive tranches of details about Kilmar…
And now, I will put on my conical, purple wizard hat and magically take you into the conference room where the Democrat brain trust was gathered to discuss strategy in the middle of last week. I’ll keep their identities secret, and refer to them only as Democrat Operatives (DO) 1-6.
DO 1: This is going great! The walls are closing in on Trump now! American voters are suckers for a clean-cut immigrant like Kilmar. By the way, get somebody at MSNBC to double-check his name. All of those Hispanics have a crazy long chain of names, and a lot of them have a “Jesus” somewhere in there.
DO 2: Ooh, that would be great! We could put the word out that all of our reporters should start calling him “Jesus” between now and Easter. The Catholics would eat that stuff up!
DO 1: Good idea. And somebody line up some soft-focus photo shoots and interviews with his American wife and kids.
DO 3: I don’t know, Hakeem. I’ve heard a story that he had some suspected gang affiliations in the past. Maybe we shouldn’t over-play our hand on this.
DO 1: Come on. “Suspected” means nothing. Just more anti-Hispanic racism from the right-wing fascists. I mean, he hasn’t had any due process at all! I’m sure that if they had any evidence, they would have put it before a court and- (He sees DO 4 with his hand up.) What?
DO 4: Actually, he had an immigration court hearing, and the judge found evidence that he was associated with MS-13.
DO 1: SCHIFF!
DO 5: What?
DO 1: I’m not talking to you. It’s just an expression. Look, it was probably a crooked Trump judge, lying about Kilmar’s gang ties. We need to insist that the case be appealed to another judge, so—
DO 6: Actually, it was appealed to a different court.
DO 1 (pause): And?
DO 6: The appeals court agreed.
DO 1: SCHIFF!
DO 5: Are you using my name as a swear word?
DO 2: Get over it, Pencil-Neck. The adults are talking.
DO 5: Adults? Shouldn’t you be at the kid’s table, Hogg!
DO 1: Shut up. Let’s not get hung up on those alleged gang ties. The main thing is that another judge wrote an order saying that he can’t be deported. So Trump broke the law.
DO 3: Actually, that order in 2019 said that he CAN be deported, but just not to El Salvador.
DO 1 (rubbing his temples): Fine. But he was deported to El Salvador. We’ll emphasize that.
DO 6: Yes! He got that deportation hold in 2019. I’m sure he’s kept his nose clean for the last 6 years, because the Feds would have deported him to somewhere else if he’d gotten in trouble.
DO 3: Actually, he was stopped in 2022 for speeding and driving without a license.
DO 1: SCHIFF! Did they take him to jail and tow the car?
DO 3: No. The cop gave him a warning for the expired DL.
DO 2: Wow. He must have been one of ours.
DO 1: Anyway, the main point is that he obviously didn’t have anything suspicious in the car with him. Why don’t we just say he was profiled for “Driving While Brown?” (He notices DO 3 making a face.) What now?
DO 3: He had 8 other guys in the car with him, and they’d been driving for three days, from Texas to Maryland. And…they didn’t have any luggage.
DO 5: SCHIFF! (Everyone looks at him.) Now you’ve got me doing it!
DO 1: Okay, let’s not panic. Lots of poor people don’t have luggage. They were probably going up north to rejoin their families, or maybe meet some church sponsors who vouched for them.
DO 3 (looking down): They all gave Kilmar’s address as their own. And DOJ just announced that he was picked up for questioning at Home Depot with other MS-13 members. And Trump just showed a picture of his hands, and he’s got…
DO 1: Don’t say tattoos!
DO 3 (hesitates): Tattoos.
DO 2 and 4: SCHIFF!
DO 1: Tell me that they’re at least of his kid’s birthdays, or his wife or his mom’s names.
DO 3: They’re MS-13 tattoos.
DO 1,2,4 and 6: SCHIFF!
DO 2: Okay, forget all that. We’ve still got his wife. She’s crying her eyes out on tv. And since she says that he’s a good man and husband, and since we must believe all women, he has to be a good man and husband. That’s the transitive property, I think.
DO 5: No, the transitive property is when a dude decides that he wants to be a woman, so he spins around and clicks the heels of his ruby slippers together, and says, I’m really a woman, I’m really a woman.
DO 2: No, that’s the trans property. I’m talking about the math thing, the transitive property. It’s from algebra, I think, and –
DO 5: Who are you trying to kid, Davy? You look like you’re still taking algebra!
DO 2: Pencil neck!
DO 5: Toddler!
DO 1: Everybody shut up! (He notices an aid come in and hand a piece of paper to DO 3, then step back out.) We’ve got the loyal, crying wife, and she’s vouching for him. Our women voters will eat that up, and… (Noticing DO 3 looking extra pale.) What is it, Liz?
DO 3: DOJ just released a domestic abuse claim the wife filed against Kilmar in 2021.
DO 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6: SCHIFF!
DO 1: Okay, anybody can have a bad day. They had an argument, things got a little heated. We’ve all been there. But they talked it through and worked it out, and it never happened agai—
DO 3: She filed again six months later.
DOs (all): SCHIFF!
DO 1 puts his head on the table in front of him.
DO 1 (after a long pause): So we’ve got a bad-driving, human-smuggling, wife-beating, gang-banging illegal alien. Is that about it? (Nobody will meet his eyes.) Okay, so we’ve got to say that it’s not about Kilmar, it’s about due process, or something.
DO 2: So we shouldn’t call him “Jesus” now?
DO 1: Shut up, Hogg. Nancy, get Van Hollen on the line. We’ve gotta stop him from flying down there and making us all look like idiots.
DO 3: He’s already there.
DO 1 (too defeated to even swear): Can we at least stop him from meeting with Kilmar? He’ll be giving Trump a photo-op to hang around our necks for the mid-terms.
DO 3: He’s already met with Kilmar.
DO 1 (mumbling): Of course he has.
DO 2: Wait, this might still work. Kilmar is going to look haggard and starved from being in that concentration camp prison. Maybe he’ll even have some bruises or broken bones!
DO 1 (perking up): Yeah! We can have Spielberg make an ad for us, interspersing shots of Kilmar with shots from Schindler’s List.
DO 2 (excited): And we can CGI Trump’s head onto that Nazi commander, shooting at Jews down in the camp below him! We can call the ad, “CECOT’s List.”
DO 1 (seeing DO 3 looking at her phone, and shaking her head): What is it?
DO 3 (holding her phone out so everyone else can see it): Trump just released this video of Van Hollen and Kilmar. It looks like they’re meeting on a gay speed-date at a high-end hotel.
DO 1 (moaning): Kilmar looks great! He looks like he’s gained 5 pounds.
Everybody in the room: SCHIFF!!!
And, scene.
Tune in next week, when Hulk Homan™ releases documents proving that Kilmar helped plan 9/11, before driving across country to shoot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 