I haven't kept up with this story. Tell me they weren't trying to say the obv overlaid interpretative text is the tattoos? Am I missing something or was this situation actually this stupid?
Related to the bait and switch and how people thought they were just voting against the ridiculous democrats, I'd say they're letting it all hang out at this point. Essentially they don't care if you know this is all a big fake stupid show. All of it.
You get two effects this way:
#1. you keep your most fervent, Idiocracy-level MAGAs who will do and say anything bought in and rabid. The cult. Just enough demoralization to make them angry, just enough energization to keep them focused elsewhere. Polarization and theatrics.
#2. anyone with half a brain with any level of skepticism or curiosity gives up on democracy. No, not Democrats democracy. I mean legit democracy or republic forms of government.
What Trump supporters argued was the obviously overlaid text was just an interpretation of what the tattoos meant and so it'd be unreasonable to say the photo was photoshopped or edited because no one would be dumb enough to believe the text was really tattooed onto the guy.
But then Trump did an interview where he very angrily defended the idea that there was no text added and that there was nothing to interpret, the text of MS13 was just tattooed directly in Helvetica font onto the guy's knuckles.
But the interview of Trump's got a lot of attention and was getting talked about everywhere like on Jon Oliver's show since it made Trump look completely out of touch with reality.
So it really did get just that stupid. It's why Swalwell was trying to make the point in the hearing that the text was added and try to get Noem to agree it was added. It's really an emperor's new clothes situation where no one can call out Trump's odd comments for what they are since it'd immediately get them cast out of Trumpian circles.
In other news, Trump got blocked by the Supreme Court again and notably had everyone he appointed vote against his attempt to deny deny process to migrants. SCOTUS ruled they could still use other lawful authorities to remove the migrants. Alito and Thomas dissented, not based on the due process issues, but focusing more on things like jurisdiction.
Sparked a predictable reaction from Trump which probably won't help with the argument that he was genuinely trying to respect the rights to due process of all those involved.
It is at least a little refreshing seeing the White House treat this as them actually losing rather than make a strange argument for how they ackshually won again.
Edit:
Also probably worth noting that they referenced the Abrego Garcia case and how the US wants to see these people indefinitely detained, so just giving 24 hours notice "surely does not pass muster".
I can't help but imagine that if they skipped trying this indefinite detention then the courts may have let up and generally let them use the AEA to deport people expeditiously.
