Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) tried to dispel notions Friday that he and Kilmar Ábrego García — the Maryland man mistakenly deported to a notorious Salvadoran megaprison — were drinking margaritas during their meeting earlier in the week.
Van Hollen landed at Dulles International Airport on Friday after a two-day trip to El Salvador, where he asked to see Ábrego García. The U.S. government has previously admitted he was wrongfully deported to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador.
Among the things discussed by some conservative news outlets such as the New York Post was the claim that Van Hollen and García imbibed margaritas. Newsmax asked Trump about it during a news conference Friday, claiming the two were “sipping what appears to be margaritas."
Trump responded that Van Hollen is "fake."
"As I was landing on the airplane, I got a transcript of some questions President [Donald] Trump was asked at the White House today about what I would call 'Margarita-gate,'" Van Hollen told reporters. "I don't know if you guys have been following this, but President [Nayib] Bukele — you know, after I met with Kilmar, I did this tweet showing us at a table with these two glasses."
Van Hollen noted that cameras surrounded them.
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"So, here's what happened," he continued. "When I first sat down with Kilmar, we just had glasses of water on the table. I think maybe some coffee. And as we were talking, one of the government people came over and deposited two other glasses on the table with ice. And I don't know if it was salt or sugar around the top, but they looked like margaritas. And if you look at the one they put in front of Kilmar, it actually had a little less liquid than the one in front of me to try to make it look, I assume, like he drank out of it."
He said he wanted to be "very clear" and that "neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us."
"If you want to play a little Sherlock Holmes, I'll tell you how you can know that," Van Hollen continued. "So, if you look at the video or the picture I sent out from the beginning of our meeting, you'll see there are no glasses on the table. So you'll see in later videos that they are on the table. But they made a little mistake for some people who are very careful, right? If you sip out of one of those glasses, some of whatever it was, salt or sugar, would disappear. You would see a gap. There's no gap. Nobody drank any margaritas or sugar water or whatever it is."
He said that the actions showed "the lengths that President Bukele will go to deceive people about what's going on."
"And it's also — shows the lengths that the Trump administration and the president will go to. Because when he was asked [by] a reporter about this, he just went along for the ride," said Van Hollen.
"So, the White House and the president have been lying about this case from the beginning. They've been trying to change the subject from the beginning. As I said, and the courts have said, from the Supreme Court to the Fourth Circuit to the district court, what this is about is adhering to the Constitution, to the right of due process," Van Hollen said.
He later pointed out that the setting was almost adjusted by the Bukele team as well.
"I should also just say, you know, I mentioned the fake margarita scandal. They actually wanted to have the meeting by the side of the pool in the hotel. Just, right — I mean, this is a guy who's been at CECOT. This is a guy who's been detained. They want to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar, which, of course, is a big fat lie."
See the excerpt of the press conference below or at the link here.
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