Having made their beds over the weekend and into Monday, ABC, CBS, and NBC continued to lie in it Tuesday morning as they remained steadfast in expressing horror and rushing to the defense of illegal immigrants who were deported to an El Salvadoran jail based on their alleged membership in the dangerous, murderous Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
ABC’s Good Morning America unsurprisingly led the way. Fill-in co-host and former Biden regime apple polisher Mary Bruce boasted in a tease of “a federal judge hauling the Trump administration back to a courtroom after they appeared to ignore a directive by sending hundreds of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador.”
Take notice of how weekend co-host Whit Johnson took Bruce’s lead in painting the jettisoned illegal aliens as average joes:
We turn now to the Trump administration’s legal battle over the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants. A federal judge demanding an explanation as to why the government ignored his order, blocking the deportations and to turn around the planes that had already taken off.
Senior political correspondent Rachel Scott boasted of “this showdown between the White House and courts only escalating” with federal judge James Boasberg “demanding to know why those deportation flights landed in El Salvador when he ordered that they be turned around.”
Scott reupped the Tren de Aragua-to-Japanese-Americans comparison: “The administration claims the men on board were members of criminal gangs. Many were deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the government to support people with little to no due process and was last used to round up Japanese Americans during World War II.”
“The White House has not released the identities of those deported or details on their alleged crimes. The Justice Department lawyers refuse to provide any additional information insisting it would pose a national security risk. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee accusing the Trump administration of an ‘unlawful...brazen power grab,’” she added.
Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos again teamed up with chief Washington correspondent and three-time anti-Trump author Jonathan Karl to spell more doom (click “expand”):
STEPHANOPOULOS: [T]he White House has been signaling resistance to the courts since the President was inaugurated on January 20. This is the most direct defiance yet.
KARL: George, we are seeing a wide-ranging, strategic, deliberate effort by this White House to shift the balance of power away from Congress, away from the courts into the presidency, so this is the most direct. I mean, you have a situation where the administration is defying the verbal orders of a judge and then refusing to answer basic questions about who was on those flights. But it’s against the backdrop of the administration disavowing secret — civil service protections in the firing of federal employees. We saw the President himself declare that President Biden’s preemptive pardons are null and void. We have seen the President issue executive orders to sanction law firms who have done work for his political opponents. And we’ve seen the administration fail to comply with an order to resume foreign aid that has been congressionally mandated, passed by Congress. All that against the backdrop of a senior administration official who you heard there in Rachel’s piece say, “I don’t care what judges think.” Now, George, we’ve seen presidents complain and complain mightily about court rulings. But what we have never seen is a president or a White House suggest that they will not comply with a judge’s order. It’s important to point out that, right now though, the administration says they are no longer — at least temporarily halted, consistent with the judge’s order those deportation flights under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. They are, at least for now, they say, complying with that judge’s order.
(....)
KARL: I should say the administration feels confident that they are going to win many of these cases, that they will ultimately prevail at the Supreme Court, but if the Supreme Court — and remember, this Supreme Court has ruled against this President — if that happens, will they comply with that order? That’s the real constitutional test.
NBC’s Today had chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander on the case and fretted the White House carried out “deportations...without due process” and “critics warn[ing] the Trump administration right now appears to be intentionally ignoring court orders, blocking those flights.”
“This morning, the Trump administration’s battle with the courts ramping up...with a tense hearing late Monday after the White House’s decision to deport more than 130 alleged gang members from Venezuela to a prison in El Salvador over the weekend despite a judicial order to halt the flights,” he continued.
Over at CBS Mornings, co-host Nate Burleson declared in the “Eye Opener”: “Here in this country, a judge is demanding to know why the Trump administration ignored his ruling to turn around flights sending Venezuelan immigrants to a prison in El Salvador.”
Senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang reported “[t]op Trump aides are fiercely defending the move and blasting the courts” for rebuking the administration’s flights “carrying Venezuelan migrants.”
She continued (click “expand”):
JIANG: Ultimately, Boasberg will decide if Trump can use the Aliens Enemies Act to deport immigrants, which does not require standard court proceedings. A big part of the White House’s reasoning is they say the immigrants are dangerous gang members. [TO HOMAN] How do you determine whether somebody is a gang member? What criteria do you use?
HOMAN: I’m not going to share that — all of that with you, but whether through social media, through the activities, to their criminal records here and abroad. So, you know, this is — this was done in a very — the review of this issue was at the highest level I’ve seen.
JIANG: Venezuelan officials say the migrants are being held hostage in a crime against humanity and immigration advocates argue they were stripped of their rights.
ACLU’s LEE GELERNT: Not only have they not had due process to make the showing that they’re not a member of the gang, but the government has repeatedly over — overstated who they’re detaining. I do think we are slipping closer and closer to a constitutional crisis.
To see the relevant transcripts from March 18, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).
