'White House is giving high-fives': Ex-DNC official weighs in on Dem's El Salvador visit

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) delivered a fiery speech in defense of the rights of wrongly deported Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia after meeting with him following nearly a month of lockup in a notorious Salvadoran megaprison. But to former Democratic National Committee official Mo Elithee, he may have spent too much time focusing on the wrong thing.

Specifically, Elithee told a follow-up panel on CNN he had concerns with how much time Van Hollen devoted to debunking the idea that the drinks at the table where he was photographed meeting with Abrego Garcia were "margaritas," or at least that they had been ordered willingly.

"Van Hollen was saying that he wasn't sure if it was salt or sugar," said anchor Kasie Hunt. "President Bukele referenced them as margaritas. They don't really appear to be that way, at least the way we know them here in the U.S. But again, Van Hollen noting, you can't see this — I mean, Mo, to this broader point, I mean, this is where we are, I will say there are some criticisms of Van Hollen for these optics. He clearly felt like he needed to clear it up, right? What's your view of how, what he did just now?

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"He could have cleared it up much more concisely, didn't have to spend as much time talking about margaritas as he did," said Elithee.

"But he was tired. I will say that," political commentator Chuck Todd interjected.

"Fair. Right? Look, I think everyone in the White House are giving each other high-fives and everyone who supports the guy in El Salvador are giving each other high-fives, right?" said Elithee. "Both sides have kind of gone to their corners and are saying, this is the fight we want to have, whereas I don't necessarily know it's the conversation that would actually resonate with the rest of the country."

"Again, I go back to what we were talking about earlier; it's less about him as it is about all of us," he added. "If he were to have focused on that — he did it a little bit. He did a little bit there about a third of the way through, right, where he said taking away his constitutional rights takes away all of our constitutional rights. That is the place to take this. We don't know all of the details about this guy, so let's not make him a martyr. Let's make this about the fact that Donald Trump and his administration are chipping away at our rights on a daily basis. He's making our lives harder economically, and now he's making our lives harder on issues like this."

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