HBO’s award-winning Last Week Tonight with John Oliver blasted ABC’s Terry Moran for refusing to continue to engage with Trump as he was lying about a photoshopped image that clearly shows MS-13 superimposed on Abrego Garcia’s fingers.
All over social media, and on news sites like ourselves highlighted the ridiculous debate Trump had with Moran trying to claim a picture Trump was using to denigrate Garcia as a MS -13 gang member to justify his deportation was photo-shopped with the letters and numbers of the gang imposed on his fingers above the tattoos.
Moran should have continued with the discussion until he grabbed the original picture of Garcia’s hand, and let Trump explain the lie he just told.
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Luckily for us, John Oliver did:
OLIVER: I’m genuinely shocked Trump doesn’t drink alcohol, because that is the most drunk-at-an-IHOP conversation I think I’ve ever heard, and no disrespect to Terry, but maybe don’t move on from that.
I know you’ve got other questions to get to, but if the President of the United States is trying to tell you that this amateur-hour photoshop is real, let him go get the picture and make him say it again.
Point to that Helvetica-looking M and make the President say, yes, I believe that artless M, that’s weirdly clearer and darker than all the other tattoos is real.
Make him say, I believe that man went to a tattoo parlor and said, the skull’s pretty spooky, but what I’d really like is a neatly aligned three directly on the bone of my knuckle, and can you please make it so that it doesn’t stretch or bend with the natural curves of the human hand, and also make it look like a typewriter did it, because — Terry, sometimes, when Trump’s doing his normal racist blue skying, you do need to cut him off to slow the flow of hatred into the world, but if he wants to tell America that this laughably doctored picture is evidence of a major threat to American safety, you have an obligation to let the man cook.
We’ve seen this happen too many times from NBC, ABC, and CBS, who are so grateful Trump granted them airtime that they refuse to hold him accountable in any meaningful fashion.
When Trump goes off with blatant lies, and the host says they disagree and wants to move on to other topics, that is a dereliction of duty.
What good does that do to the American public watching?
Terry Moran looked like a deer in the headlights, trying to move on to a new topic while Trump was sinking himself.