The current government of the United States of America (the Trump administration) rounded up a few hundred gang members and leaders – members of MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, among the most vicious organized crime groups on Earth – and flew them to El Salvador, whose government has committed to keeping them all behind bars in an absolute maximum security prison, where they will never again endanger law-abiding citizens of either country.

No sane person could find fault with this. 

The only sensible complaint would be against the Biden-Harris regime, and against other prior regimes such as the Obama-Biden administration, which had illegally allowed these demons into the United States in the first place through their willful neglect of our border controls.

And yet, the mainstream press is acting its usual role, shilling for the Democrat party, arguing that deporting known gate-crashing murderers and locking them up is somehow a bad thing.

This isn’t a surprise. 

The Democrat party has been the party of criminals for decades now, with the news organizations of the major networks their primary accomplices.

But this story comes with an unusually effective visual aid, in the form of a photo op provided by the Secretary of Homeland Security and a particularly interesting moment exposing the media’s lack of self-awareness.

Secretary Kristi Noem, until recently the two-term governor of South Dakota (following terms as both a state and federal legislator), flew to El Salvador to inspect the prison and to film a message for public consumption. 

She stood in front of a jail cell jam-packed with heavily tattooed gang members, and put the criminals of the world on notice, essentially saying that if you come to America illegally, if you join crime gangs and commit crimes on American soil, you’ll spend the rest of your sorry life in a place like this.

It's an effective photo op. 

It’s a powerful and welcome warning, following years of soft American leftist prosecutors and judges who’ve grown famous for releasing criminals back onto the streets without punishment, however dangerous their crimes, without the slightest regard for the well-being of law-abiding citizens. 

Law-abiding citizens, after all, are hardly the Democratic Party’s customer base, anymore.

The press doesn’t want to support the potential victims of these thugs; they want to find a way to support the thugs themselves.  They don’t want to help an administration that opposes the gangs; they want to support the gangs.  So they look for a weakness, a chink in the armor to take advantage of.  And they thought they’d found one.

The press first made fun of Kristi Noem for doing a photo op at all, viewing it as a cheap stunt. Then they noticed she was wearing an expensive wristwatch, and made fun of that, implying that it’s politically tactless to be photographed wearing an expensive wristwatch. 

So this has been the theme of the articles that accompany the omnipresent still shots from the Secretary’s trip: a presumably fragile middle-aged white woman with an expensive watch, showing that she’s safe from these hundreds of cold-blooded killers just because of a set of iron prison bars.

And the media sees no irony in their report at all.

Are they that lacking in self-awareness?

The picture not only succeeds in spreading the message intended by Secretary Noem, it goes beyond, because the public is forced to recognize the media’s opposition to those bars.

The left wanted to let these killers into the United States, and never wanted to drive them out, even when they’re caught committing crimes.

The left wanted to stop the Trump-Vance administration from its intended crackdown, and erected both a judicial attack and a media barrage in opposition to it.

When the criminals were quickly caught and flown to El Salvador for imprisonment, the left’s pocket judges actually attempted to stop the plane in mid-flight and make it turn around!

And now that these hoods are in jail for life, the left tries to stop the Trump administration from spreading the word about it, from communicating to their American constituents that the law is finally being enforced again.

The public sees this in real time, and files it away in their memories for the future – hopefully to remember it all on future election days.

It is a powerful image, one with deeper meanings that the out-of-touch left doesn’t realize:

That cell full of illegal aliens – the dozens of drug dealers, thugs, robbers, rapists, and murderers -- represents tens of thousands more such specific, individual threats that Democrat administrations and sanctuary cities have purposely invited into our midst, again and again.

That pretty cabinet secretary with a treasured wristwatch represents the honest, vulnerable, law-abiding public – the men and women, workers and students, young and old, black and white, Hispanic and Asian – whose homes, cars, possessions and very lives are jeopardized every day by those criminals.

And that wall of iron bars – that far-off El Salvadoran prison cell keeping Kristi Noem safe from the monsters behind it – represents the American criminal justice system and the forces of federal law enforcement, when directed by a team that honors its obligation to the American public.

The press thought it would make Secretary Noem look foolish by pointing out that the bars of a jail are all that’s keeping her safe.

The press doesn’t realize that this was exactly the point, and the press has chosen the wrong side.

Because, on this issue, as on so many others, the press is allied with the brutal threats to peace and security – and the Trump administration is allied with the law enforcement system that’s determined to protect those thugs’ intended victims.

Every week, every day, every hour that passes, the message is clearer to more American citizens: the Trump Republicans – dare we say, the MAGA Republicans – support the law enforcement tools that keep the American people safe.

And MAGA’s opponents – the modern Democrats and their allies in the media and pop culture - blatantly, vocally support the bloodthirsty threats who endanger us all.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer, and speaker. Read his book on the surprisingly numerous varieties of vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris years (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his most recent collection of public policy essays, Current Events and the Issues of Our Age, all available in eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.

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