Prison torture videos are a new low even for MAGA – but Trump is about to go lower
Last week, Trump held a campaign-style rally on the campus of Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan. To the delight of his MAGA fans, he trotted out the same personal grievances he’s been serving up since 2015.
Despite achieving fewer legislative accomplishments during his first 100 days than any president since the 1950s, Trump told his adoring crowd that he had “accomplished more in three months than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years.”
If aiding the enemy, defying court orders, and taking a chainsaw to federal services are “accomplishments,” then Trump is accomplished indeed.
MAGA delights in Trump’s cruelty
After his usual braggadocio, Trump pivoted to video recordings of abject cruelty. Behind the podium, Trump displayed large screen videos of the inhumane treatment of helpless migrants he deported to El Salvador's notorious gulag, CECOT. He brayed, still without evidence, “The worst of the worst are being sent to a no-nonsense prison in El Salvador… watch this!”
“This” was a series of video clips showing hundreds of men he has imprisoned without due process, without a hearing, and without credible evidence that they committed any crime. “This” was a video showing men brutally bent over, having their heads shaved bare, and forcibly shoved into concentration camp-style cages that sleep 75 to 80. “This” was Trump priming his already violence-prone base into a bloodthirsty frenzy, as they exploded in raucous approval of his inhumanity, thundering, "USA! USA! USA!"
According to an affidavit from the Human Rights Watch, prisoners held in CECOT are denied communication with the outside, and only appear before courts in online hearings, often in groups of several hundred detainees at the same time. The Salvadoran government calls them “terrorists” who “will never leave” the prison.
El Salvador, governed by a man who controls the media and calls himself a “cool” dictator, denies human rights groups access to its prisons, and allows journalists to visit only under highly staged circumstances. In videos produced during these visits, prison authorities brag about men held in completely dark solitary confinement cells.
Trump’s stochastic violence against judges
Trump also used the rally to showcase his continued attack on judges, whom he called “communist radical left judges,” claiming they are trying to ‘seize his power.’ Nodding to the courts’ inability to enforce their own orders, Trump warned the world: “Nothing will stop me.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio concurs. At least week’s cabinet meeting, to which Trump invited the media, each cabinet member tried to out-flatter the next person by praising Trump. Seated to Trump’s right, Rubio announced that questions regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man sent in error to El Salvador — specifically, what steps the White House was taking to facilitate his return — were off limits to the media. “I’ll never tell you that, and you know who else I’ll never tell?” Rubio jeered.
“A judge,” he answered himself, “because the conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States.”
Due process is not a matter of foreign policy
Vice President J.D. Vance also describes the rule of law with sarcastic bombast. He has slammed critics, including federal judges, for “weeping over the lack of due process.”
The Fifth Amendment protects all persons, not just US citizens. It guarantees that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law;” it does not say, ‘no citizens.’ Trump, Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Vance act as if they’ve never heard of it, despite its storied American history. Trying to assume the role of the courts in deciding what the law is, they keep declaring, falsely, that their abuse of immigrants is about “foreign policy.” It isn’t. It’s about the US Constitution, the lynchpin of democracy, without which we don’t have one.
After the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that Trump must facilitate Garcia’s return from El Salvador, Trump took to social media to turn a legal block into a PR strategy. He wrote that he is “being stymied at every turn by even the U.S. Supreme Court…which seemingly doesn’t want me to send violent criminals and terrorists back to Venezuela… If we don’t get these criminals out of our Country, we are not going to have a Country any longer.”
Revealing his complete ignorance of how legal immigration works, he added, “We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years. We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country. Such a thing is not possible to do…MAGA!”
It’s as if, despite tanking last year’s border bill just so he could campaign on it, he’s never actually considered that processing immigrants requires paperwork.
VP Vance, who knows better, says it’s up to Trump—and himself— to decide what due process is, and what it requires. “To say the administration must observe “due process” is to beg the question: what process is due is a function of our resources, the public interest, the status of the accused, the proposed punishment, and so many other factors.” No. It isn’t. It’s not up to Vance and Trump’s discretion because the Fifth and 14th Amendments, and well established precedent, mapped out what due process requires — notice, a hearing, and an opportunity to be heard — decades ago.
Trump is a symptom, not a cause
It’s a sick disease of the mind, this urge to oppress others for power, but Trump didn’t invent it. Neither did Hitler, Mao Zedong, or Stalin. It’s been there since we stopped living in tune with the earth, and started living in our heads. It’s our collective fall from grace, a phenomenon worsened exponentially by social media.
Watching our experiment stumble brings deep personal anguish, like watching someone you love destroy themselves. You’d give your own life to help, but they have to save themselves.
A minority of Americans- 23%- approve of what Trump is doing and would loudly cheer “USA!!” at videos of human suffering. These are the same people who used to applaud public lynchings; before that, they salivated at public stonings, witch burnings and Caligula’s public displays of torture. It seems they will always be with us; the only positive is that there are far more of us than there are of them.
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are or have been published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Abrego Garcia Family/Handout via REUTERS
People protest against Donald Trump, in Washington. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura