Donald Trump and the president of El Salvador gloat about shipping migrants to a Salvadoran mega-prison, muse about sending American citizens there next, and lie about the court orders they're ignoring. Jon, Lovett, and Tommy break down what it means for the administration to ignore the Supreme Court's order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the message Trump is sending to student visa holders with the arrest of Rümeysa Öztürk, why Trump's war on the media appears to be succeeding, and reports that the Trump family is teaming up with Binance, the shady crypto platform, on a new money-making scheme. Then, Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal joins Jon to talk about Trump's trade war, the possibility of a recession, and what might happen next. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.
Chapter 1: What is the controversy surrounding Trump's rendition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador?
On Monday morning, Trump hosted an Oval Office press conference with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who oversees the notorious 40,000-person torture dungeon known as CICOT, where Trump has been sending people who the government says are gang members, assertions they're making without offering any evidence or allowing any hearings.
The meeting came just a few days after the Supreme Court issued a ruling on the case of Kilmar Obrego-Garcia, a Maryland father and husband of an American citizen who the government mistakenly and illegally sent to the El Salvador prison, a fact that multiple Trump officials admitted in court, including Trump's solicitor general.
The SCOTUS ruling, in which there were no dissents, said that a lower court's order, quote, "...properly requires the government to facilitate..." Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador, end quote.
The Trump administration has responded by making the argument in court and in public that actually they have no legal obligation to facilitate Garcia's release. And they interpret the Supreme Court's ruling to mean that the U.S. only has to allow Garcia back into the country if El Salvador chooses to release him.
Here's Trump and Bukele talking about this in the Oval today, joined by Stephen Miller.
Do you plan to ask President Bukele to help return the man who your administration says was mistakenly deported? The man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador?
What's the ruling in the Supreme Court, Steve? Was it nine to nothing?
Yes, it was a nine to zero. In our favor. In our favor against the district court ruling. The ruling solely stated that if this individual at El Salvador's sole discretion was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time. No version of this legally ends up with him ever living here.
Can President Bukele weigh in on this? Do you plan to return him?
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Chapter 2: How is the Trump administration responding to the Supreme Court ruling on Abrego Garcia?
Why don't you just say, isn't it wonderful that we're keeping criminals out of our country? Why can't you just say that?
Just incredibly dark and infuriating. And I mean, they lie all the time, but Stephen Miller's just complete lie about what is in the Supreme Court ruling and what it says is shocking. Just making up quotes, making up assertions from the Supreme Court ruling. What did you guys make of the discussion in the Oval about this and how the administration is responding to the Supreme Court?
Chapter 3: What are Trump's and Bukele's statements about deportations and the El Salvador prison?
A few thoughts. I mean, I thought it was notable that Trump himself doesn't seem all that comfortable talking about the details. He deferred to Pam Bondi. He deferred to Stephen Miller. Even sad little Marco Rubio decided to weigh in because he couldn't bear being left out.
But yeah, I mean, your point that their general strategy is to lie about what's happening in the courts, lie about what the courts are saying. The craziest new one, I think it's over the weekend, was Stephen Miller now arguing that the administration didn't make a mistake when it sent Abrego Garcia del Salvador. The Solicitor General said it was a mistake.
The Supreme Court wrote in its opinion that it was a mistake. DOJ has admitted it was a mistake at every single hearing. but Miller is now just gaslighting. Miller also said, I think it was on Fox News, that the gang that was threatening Garcia no longer exists, therefore it's not a problem to send him to El Salvador.
I don't know if that's true, but if it is true, it's because all those gang members are now in the prison where they sent this man to rot wrongly based on a mistake. So they're also just looking to find every loophole or technicality to avoid doing what the court says, like We're debating what the meaning of effectuate or facilitate means.
And then finally, I mean, watching Trump and his team, watching Bukele sit there sneering, smugly, laughing, enjoying it all, made me feel like...
I talked to a very smart immigration lawyer today who said something similar that it seems very unlikely the courts are going to be able to get abrigo garcia back because ultimately the courts will say the u.s government can't order bukele to do something they can't order el salvador to do something
And I think that what that says is that the only thing that we can do is keep up the public pressure, keep talking about this, keep this story in the news, because Bukele's line is like, oh, I'm not gonna smuggle a man back into the United States. That's not what has to happen. Bukele needs to let Abrego Garcia out of prison. Then he can buy a plane ticket and fly to the United States.
It's just that simple. But he's content holding a man in prison. who is not even accused of committing a crime in El Salvador because he left the country when he was 16 years old.
Yeah, so I feel like we've rightly focused on trying to fix this right away and then the larger implications of it in terms of what it means if the president can send someone to a foreign gulag and then because that gulag is on foreign soil, basically wash his hands of any responsibility. And that is terrible.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Trump's plan to send American citizens to foreign prisons?
U.S.
citizen.
By the way, they're barely even making that argument. Right. This is just, like, the fear when the Trump administration before the ruling started talking about how these people are out of their custody was they would just tell the court they tried and failed with a wink and a nod to an ally in El Salvador. They're not even doing that. I also was just...
When I was reading about the Gutierrez case just before we recorded, basically it seems like he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, gets rounded up, suddenly finds himself in Texas.
Because one of the ICE agents said, oh, he's not the one we're looking for. And the other one was like, just grab him anyway.
And so they're trying to fill these planes, right, with Venezuelans. This is their test case. This was their first attempt. This was their way of signaling a new policy. This was their trial run.
Do we really think they're going to make fewer mistakes when they're doing more plane loads of people, when they're doing thousands of people, not hundreds of people, to really think they're not going to make more mistakes when they've dispatched even greater numbers of ICE agents to try to round up more people?
Well, the Washington Post reported that the goal for one year is a million people. Stephen Miller is like the guy driving the organization every single day to deport one million people this year.
So we also have some updates on the case of Rumesa Ozturk, the Tufts University PhD student from Turkey who masked agents grabbed off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, threw into the back of a van and sent her to a detention center in Louisiana.
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Chapter 5: What happened in the case of Rümeysa Öztürk and how does it reflect on student visa policies?
Yeah, I guess I'm at the point where I don't believe the way you challenge Trump is by taking away coverage of him. I just don't think that that's effective. And I don't know what other tools they have. It's not easy. But I do think that we are better off for Caitlin Collins having been there.
the truth post about punishing cbs trump specifically praised fcc chairman brendan carr saying basically i sure hope he does the right thing here what do we know about carr and what he uh what he might do or can do i guess well he's the chairman of the fcc uh he's a right-wing activist he wrote the project 2025 chapter on the fcc he's known for playing hardball and using all the tools at his disposal to go after media organizations that trump
decides are biased in some way. For example, he's currently or has demanded that CBS turn over all these internal documents about an interview they did with Kamala Harris that Trump was not a part of because Trump says is unfairly edited. It was utterly ridiculous. But Carr did Trump's bidding there. Carr was also, I believe, spotted recently wearing a golden Trump pin. Did you guys all see this?
Yes, I did see that. He was wearing a
Trump head? I want us to actually not call it a pin. It was a fucking brooch. It was a brooch. He was wearing a Trump brooch. This fucking fag is wearing a Trump brooch. It's like Trump's face on it? It's a golden brooch. It is the fucking queeniest fucking thing a person could have. It was drag. He was wearing Trump drag.
So was his face on the brooch?
It was Trump's face looking up at him.
Yeah.
It's unbelievable.
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Chapter 6: How is Trump’s administration waging a war on the media and what are the consequences?
We're going to pick them up by their ankles, and we're going to shake them. We're going to shake them. That's the kind of lawyer you want. Now he's living in a tent. Yeah. That's the kind of lawyer you want. Really nice tent. You want a lawyer, even when they're at a party, they're thinking about how they're going to shake down these fucking studios. All right?
Not these capitulating little fucking weasels worrying about their Exxon Mobil money.
Oh, boy.
You got to shake them. That was a good lawyer. He's a great lawyer. Pod Save America is brought to you by Helix. I love my Helix mattress. I have a Dawn Lux. It's incredibly comfortable. Just yesterday, I was thinking about how nice it is at the end of the day to get into my linen sheets on my beautiful Helix mattress. It's so nice to have a nice bed. It's a gift you give yourself.
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I'm going to get into the latest on Trump's tariff policy in my interview with Joe Weisenthal. But before that, let's talk about the politics of how the trade war is playing out. According to a CBS YouGov poll released over the weekend, support for Trump's handling of the economy and inflation continues to slide.
A few notable numbers from the poll, 75% of respondents said the short-term impact of tariffs will be rising prices. 63% disliked Trump's approach to trade, even though a bare majority does support its stated goals. That said, 57% of independents, as well as 84% of Democrats, 9% of Republicans, said Trump does not have a clear tariffs and trade plan. No shit. Yeah.
Latest example over the weekend, Customs and Border Protection issued a notice that exempted electronics like smartphones and computers from the latest round of tariffs. But on Sunday, the administration said those exemptions would be temporary.
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