27 December 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
On January 20th of 2025, Donald Trump again took the U.S. Presidential Oath of Office:
“I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
“WATCH: Trump sworn in as 47th U.S. president | Trump 2025 Inauguration”
On May 4th of 2025, Trump contradicted himself on that — contradicted that oath:
“Trump, asked if he has to ‘uphold the Constitution,’ says, ‘I don’t know’”
Sunday, 4 May 2025
“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump replied when asked by “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker whether he agreed with Rubio. His comments came during a wide-ranging interview at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which aired Sunday. [To see the back-and-forth between NBC’s Kristen Welker and President Trump on that, click here.]
That discussion concerned the following legal case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Kilmar_Abrego_Garcia
Kilmar Armando Ábrego García,[a][b] a Salvadoran man living in the United States, was illegally[9] deported on March 15, 2025, by the US government under the Trump administration, which called it “an administrative error”.[10] At the time, he had never been charged with or convicted of a crime in either country; despite this, he was imprisoned without trial in the Salvadoran Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).[11][12][13] His case became the most prominent[14] of the hundreds of migrants the US sent to be jailed without trial at CECOT[15] under the countries’ agreement[11] where the US would pay the Salvadoran government to imprison US deportees there.[16] The administration defended the deportation and accused Garcia of being a member of MS-13—a US-designated terrorist organization — based on a determination made during a 2019 immigration court bail proceeding. Abrego Garcia has denied the allegation.[17]
Abrego Garcia grew up in El Salvador, and around 2011, at age 16, he illegally immigrated to the United States to escape gang threats. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him withholding of removal status due to the danger he would face from gang violence if he returned to El Salvador. This status allowed him to live and work legally in the US. At the time of his deportation in 2025, he lived in Maryland with his wife and children who are all American citizens, and he was complying with annual US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) check-ins.[18]
After Abrego Garcia was deported, his wife filed suit in Maryland asking that the US government return him to the US. The district court judge ordered the government to “facilitate and effectuate” his return. The government appealed, and on April 10, 2025, the Supreme Court stated unanimously[c] that the government must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the US.[21] The administration interpreted “facilitate” to mean it was not obligated to seek his release, and it was up to El Salvador whether to release him.[22]
On June 6, 2025, the federal government returned Abrego Garcia to the US, and the Department of Justice announced that he had been indicted in Tennessee for “conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain” and “unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain”. He was jailed in Tennessee.[23][24] A federal judge in Tennessee ruled that he could be released pending trial, but after his lawyers expressed concern that he might be immediately deported again, she ordered that he remain in prison for his own protection.[25] On July 23, the Maryland and Tennessee courts simultaneously ordered that he be released from prison and prohibited his immediate deportation after release.[26] A month later, he was released on bail, and he returned to Maryland. ICE officials said that they intended to place him in immigration detention as soon as possible, and would initiate proceedings to deport him to a third country.[27] He was detained by ICE a few days later.[28] On December 11, a federal judge ordered him to be immediately released.[29]
Background
Abrego Garcia, pictured in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement document dated 2019[2]
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was born in the Los Nogales neighborhood of San Salvador, El Salvador, in July 1995.[2][30] In El Salvador, the Barrio 18 criminal gang extorted his mother’s pupusa (a street food) business for money and threatened that if she did not pay the money, they would force her eldest son, Cesar, to join the gang; the gang later threatened to kill him.[2][31] As a result, the family paid the money and hid Cesar, eventually sending him to the United States.[2][32] Barrio 18 then turned its attention to Kilmar, who was around 12 years old. The gang followed Kilmar and continued to threaten his family.[2] Eventually, when Kilmar was 16 years old,[32][33] his family sent him to the US as well.[2] Court documents indicate that around 2011 or 2012,[34][d] he illegally crossed the Mexico–US border near McAllen, Texas.[30] In other court documents, the government stated that he entered the US “at or near an unknown place on or about an unknown date”.[39]
From the US border, Abrego Garcia traveled to Maryland in order to live with his brother Cesar, who became a US citizen.[30] In 2016, Abrego Garcia met Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a US citizen, and they later married.[2] After marrying, the couple had one child, whom they raised alongside Vasquez Sura’s two children from an earlier relationship.[2][40] All three children have special needs;[40][30] the son born to the couple has autism and a hearing defect, and is “unable to communicate verbally”.[32] Abrego Garcia lived in Maryland with his family,[32][4] and at the time of his deportation had not been charged with or convicted of any criminal offense, including gang membership, in the US or El Salvador.[41]
Here was the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on this matter:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf
NOEM v. ABREGO GARCIA, 10 April 2025
UNANIMOUS all 9 ‘Justices’:
“The order 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.” “The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. For its part, the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.”
ONLY THE COURT’S 3 DEMOCRATS went a bit further against Tump:
“The Government now requests an order from this Court permitting it to leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law. The only argument the Government offers in support of its request, that United States courts cannot grant relief once a deportee crosses the border, is plainly wrong. See Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U. S. 426, 447, n. 16 (2004); cf. Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U. S. 723, 732 (2008). The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene. See Trump v. J. G. G., 604 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 8). That view refutes itself.”
NEITHER of those opinions ordered the President to free Garcia, though the 9-0 opinion DID say that Trump must “ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.” Trump (his ‘Justice’ Department) has ignored that, and has flat-out refused to “‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release”; they, to the contrary, CONTINUE to block his release.
Abrego Garcia, thus, remains, for an indefinite time, in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, which hides from the public its barbaric treatment of its prisoners. Meanwhile, the Trump regime just keeps adding, against Garcia, new — and almost certainly false — charges, in order to drag out his indefinite confinement there, in this torturous limbo, until he will die from it, like many others do, and be buried in the prison’s mass graves. And Garcia would NOT be there “had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.” Thus, if the 9-0 decision meant anything, it would mean that Trump must release Garcia immediately — but this is a unanimously fascist Court, and so it remains silent on Trump’s ignoring their ‘order’ or ‘decision’. It allows Trump to bring ADDITIONAL fake charges against Garcia, to drag the case out yet further.
Today, on December 27th, the AP headlined “Federal judge to hold hearing on whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being vindictively prosecuted”, and reported that “Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr. wrote in Tuesday’s order that Abrego Garcia had enough evidence to hold a hearing on the topic, which Crenshaw scheduled for Jan. 28.” If you click on that “Abrego Garcia” you will see Trump’s case against Garcia is actualy filled with lies, such as that “Now, attorneys for Abrego Garcia say the informant had identified an MS-13 chapter in New York, where Abrego Garcia has never lived.”
Trump, in his interview with Kristen Welker, had said he lets his ‘Justice’ Department do whatever it wants, because “I’m not a lawyer.” Trump was the person who had taken the Presidential oath — now twice — but he says, in this matter, that he simply delegates downward, to his appointees, such decisions as whether or not to violate the Constitution — in violation of that Presidential oath. Is THAT “faithfully executing the Office of President of the United States, and, to the best of my ability, preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States?” It’s as-if Adolf Hitler were to have said “Don’t blame me; it was my subordinates who did it. I trusted them. They were my experts. I didn’t know anything about it.” But he would never have stooped low enough to make THAT lie. (Only “structuralist”-“functionalist” ‘historians’, such as Hans Mommson, David Irving and Christopher Browning — proponents of the “weak dictator” or, to put it softly, of the “not strong dictator,” hypothesis — do it FOR Hitler; though Hitler himself never even believed that ‘theory’, and he prided himself on the strength of his leadership, just as Trump now does. I think that both of them were/are strong dictators, and that Trump in his reply to Welker KNEW that Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, etc., do whatever he TELLS them to do, but that he simply lied to Welker, just as he normally does. He simply doesn’t give a damn about the U.S. Constitution.)
Okay, then, maybe there are people who are even stupider than he is: his followers, the people who still support him, and (in his Administration) who carry out his policies.
As-of today, Trump’s approval-rating is 43.1%. So, he authentically represents 43.1% of the U.S. adult population. This is what our elections have gotten us to. That many people respect this fascist. If electoral ‘democracy’ were democracy, then democracy would be little different from dictatorship, but that isn’t the case; it’s not. Electoral ‘democracy’ isn’t democracy, but is merely the modern path toward dictatorship (of the aristocracy). It gives the dictators a ‘democratic’ excuse for what they do.
Trump definitely is stupid, but he is realistic enough to know that the people whom he represents are even more so, and that he owes his power to them. He knows that they are even stupider than he is, because he was smart enough to fool them to support him. But what’s even worse about him is that he is something even worse than stupid; he’s a psychopath. And that is what makes him REALLY dangerously stupid. (And see this for a different aspect of his psychopathy.)
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
"I think that both of them were/are strong dictators, and that Trump in his reply to Welker KNEW that Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, etc., do whatever he TELLS them to do, but that he simply lied to Welker, just as he normally does. He simply doesn’t give a damn about the U.S. Constitution.)"
Trump may tell his underlings what to do, but you can be damn sure Trump is just doing what his owners tell him to do. And yes, he doesn't give a damn about the Constitution or the American people.
Trump's intelligence is a little above average, perhaps an IQ of around 105. But Trump is a dangerous man. Not because he has so much power and ambition, but because he is a narcissist, with no integrity, and no power. Trump is a puppet and does as he is told—he is owned. Trump is willing to do anything his owners want, as long as he is allowed to appear in control. He has no shame, just ego...a petty, weak little man.
He most definitely is dangerously stupid. He resembles a third world corrupt dictator. Some in independent media have compared him to Caligula.