ABC News got an exclusive interview with the Mango Mussolini largely because its parent company, Disney, bent the knee (Disney Bows to Donald Trump). I’m sure Trump was expecting a softball interview because of that — but then the interviewer, Terry Moran, brought up the Abrego Garcia case.
Trump insisted Abrego Garcia was an MS13 gang member, citing that “photo” as proof. When Moran pointed out that it had been photoshopped, Trump insisted over and over that it was not. As described in The Bulwark (scroll down):
DO NOT UPSET THE KING: Twelve days ago, Donald Trump posed in the Oval Office with a printed picture of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s knuckle tattoos—a marijuana leaf, a smile, a cross, and a skull, over which had been superimposed the letters and numbers “M S 1 3.” “He’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles,” Trump tweeted then, prompting many to wonder: He knows that’s just someone’s guess as to what the actual tattoos mean, right?
Turns out, uh, no. Trump plainly thought that the photoshopped “M S 1 3” was part of the real tattoo—a position he defended explicitly, at excruciating length, in an interview with ABC’s Terry Moran last night. Seriously, you cannot possibly believe how long he spends dying on this hill without watching it happen yourself. [emphasis added]
For almost one and a half minutes — a lifetime on TV — Trump and Moran went at it. Here is one particularly telling excerpt:
“You’re not being very nice” says the man who orders US citizens deported without trial.
More to the point, this is yet another example — an excruciating one — of how Trump not only denies reality, he expects everyone to bow to his unreality. This is that altered hurricane map on steroids and hopped up on crack cocaine. As PolticalWire put it this morning:
Trump can’t believe Terry Moran’s refusal to accept his un-reality.
The thing about reality, though, is that it doesn’t care if you deny it.
