Summary
Trump reportedly held up a digitally altered image of the hand of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was deported by the Trump administration, in an attempt to prove Garcia is a gang member.
Trump can be seen holding a printed-out photo… demonstrating that “MS-13” is tattooed across his knuckles.
“This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back,” Trump posted. However, many have pointed out that the image appears photoshopped.
“MS-13 looks like it was typed on the photo.” “Needing to have a photo doctored… is definitely something a psychopath would do.”
It’s so obvious that the letters and numbers are there to show what the tattooed symbols represent. I feel like I’m in bizarro world that people don’t understand that and think they’ve found some smoking gun.
It doesn’t change the need for due process, but come on people.
Trump’s own words indicated that he thought the MS13 tattoos were on the knuckles, which is where the Arial font characters are. So either Trump doesn’t know what a knuckle is, or he was speaking imprecisely, or he’s a fucking moron, or all of the above.
In any case, as someone pointed out above, it’s unlikely MS13 would be working with acronyms in English for their tattoos, especially acronyms in English that only 50% work because Marijuana Smiley Cross Skull says MSCS, not MS13.
“Knuckle tattoo” is the common term for tattoos on the back of the fingers like that.
You don’t think Marijuana is an English word, do you?
Smile is sonrisa in Spanish, also…
The skull is still a puzzler though.
So, in Spanish you get MSCC? Still makes no sense as an acronym.
But others of this gang don’t have cryptic tattoos, so where are they getting this meaning from? Not to mention a quick search of MS13 tattoos does not show this.
Yeah, the story should have been, “Trump comes up with another distraction to avoid admitting he’s violating the Constitution,” or at least, “Trump too stupid to understand a picture and says stupid thing.”
Yeah, that seems obvious to me too. I’ve got no clue how the symbols are supposed to represent the letters though. I’ve a friend who has similar symbols on her fingers and they don’t stand for anything, they just look cool.
It starts off plausible:
M=Marijuana
S=Smiley
But then it gets stupid:
1=Cross?
3=Skull???
The explanation I read is that skull is cranéo in spanish - “cranium” - which would give us C = 3rd letter of the alphabet. The jury is still out on the cross, but perhaps “god is number one” or something. Never mind that actual MS-13 members have no qualms about tattooing the actual letters all over their bodies instead of elaborate ciphers…
None of this matters though, focus should be kept on the right to due process. They can smear him all they want, it doesn’t change the facts.
That really just sounds like working backwards from a conclusion to me.
The problem is, that’s even dumber. No matter how you twist it, the whole thing falls apart at the skull. Mind you, even the others are already a massive stretch.
Ultimately I think you’re right, but on the other hand, do your really expect Mr Weather Map Sharpie to not try to pass off dumb blatant lies?