Trump Really Believes His Fake ‘MS-13 Tattoo’ Photo Is Real

ABC News aired an interview with Donald Trump on Tuesday night focused on the first 100 days of the president’s second term. The interview was filled with the kind of fascist nonsense we’ve come to expect from the most unhinged U.S. president of the modern era. But there was one part of the interview that was genuinely enlightening. Trump seems to truly believe a photoshopped image he shared earlier this month on social media was authentic.

First, the backstory. President Trump posted a photo of himself on Truth Social on April 18, where he can be seen holding up a piece of paper with the words “Kilmar Abrego Garcia MS-13 Tattoo.” Abrego Garcia is the man who was wrongly deported to an El Salvador prison, though Trump insists that he deserves to be there because he’s affiliated with the gang MS-13. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Trump must return Abrego Garcia, but he’s refused to ask the president of El Salvador to do that.

As you can see from the image, which we’ve zoomed in on below, the characters M, S, 1, and 3 have been digitally added to the photo Trump is holding. The designs tattooed on the knuckles are real and appear to show a marijuana leaf, a smiley face, a cross, and a skull. There are also words below each design that are digitally added.

How do we know the image has been digitally altered? Aside from the fact that it’s pretty obvious to anyone who has spent some time on social media and can see with their eyes, there are also recent photos of Abrego Garcia where the characters “MS-13” don’t appear on his hand.

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, shared a photo of Abrego Garcia on X on April 17 from the meeting between Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Abrego Garcia. Van Hollen had traveled to El Salvador and was initially blocked from seeing him before being allowed a brief meeting.

The image from Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia becomes pretty pixelated when you blow it up, but it’s clear enough that anyone can see there’s no “MS-13” there. Other images posted by the New York Post confirm the MS-13 simply isn’t here. But Trump revealed on Tuesday that he really believes the photo he was holding up in that Truth Social photo was authentic.

Trump brought up the MS-13 tattoo unprompted in the ABC News interview that aired Tuesday claiming, “And you’ll pick out one man, but even the man that you picked out, he said he wasn’t a member of a gang, and then they looked, and on his knuckles, he had MS-13.”

But Terry Moran, the journalist who interviewed Trump, pushed back on the president’s assertion that it was real, first saying, “there’s a dispute on that.”

Trump: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. He had MS-13 on his knuckles tattooed.

Moran: Well, he had some tattoos that are interpreted that way, but let’s move on.

Trump: Wait a minute. Terry, Terry.

Moran: He did not have the letter MS-13.

Trump: It says MS-13.

Moran: That was Photoshop.

Trump: That was Photoshop?

Trump then insisted he was giving Moran “the break of a lifetime” by granting him an interview, then whined that the journalist “wasn’t being very nice.”

Trump: He had MS-13 tattooed…

Moran: We’ll agree to disagree. I want to move on to something else.

Trump: Terry, Terry, do you want me to show you the picture?

Moran: I saw the picture. We’ll agree to disagree.

Trump: And you think it was photoshopped.

Trump: Don’t photoshop it. Go look at his hand. He had MS-13.

Moran: He did have tattoos that can be interpreted that way. I’m not an expert on them. I want to turn to Ukraine. I want to get to Ukraine.

It’s not clear if Trump knows what Photoshop is, and Moran didn’t ask him that very straightforward question, even after the president said nonsensically, “don’t photoshop it.” Moran kept trying to move on to something else for some reason, but Trump kept insisting that the images were real.

Trump: No, no, Terry. He had MS as clear as you can be, not interpreted. This is why people no longer believe the news because it’s fake news.

Moran: When he was photographed in El Salvador, they aren’t there. But let’s just go on. They aren’t there when he’s in El Salvador.

Trump: They weren’t there, but they’re there now, right?

Moran: No, but they’re in your picture.

Trump: Terry.

Moran: Ukraine, sir.

Trump: He’s got MS-13 on his knuckles.

Moran: Alright, okay. We’ll take a look.

Trump: You do such a disservice.

Moran: We’ll take a look at that, sir.

Trump: Why don’t you just say yes, he does, and go on to something else?

Moran: It’s contested.

It’s truly a wild exchange worth watching for yourself. And it’s rather bizarre that Moran kept trying to move off the topic as Trump kept proving he’ll believe just about any fake image put in front of him. Moran could have asked who gave him that printout. Was it his senior advisor Stephen Miller, the heinous fascist who’s reportedly helped drive Trump’s most draconian and racist policies? We may never know, since Moran didn’t take this opportunity to ask.

It can be difficult to tell when Trump is lying versus when he’s just being a complete idiot. But Tuesday’s interview made it clear that Trump really does believe this one. It seems more likely that Trump wouldn’t dwell on it if he knew he was lying about something like this. But who knows for sure?

Whatever Trump’s actual mindset here, the image is fake, and he should know that as the most powerful person in the country. This guy has tens of thousands of people whose job is to collect intelligence from around the world to make sure he’s the most well-informed person on the planet. But he often proves himself to be one of the dumbest.

Trumpworld is pretty familiar with altering images to suit the needs of his agenda. Trump famously altered a hurricane map with a black Sharpie in 2019 to bring the forecast in line with something he’d said previously. And in late 2018 and early 2019, Trump’s social media accounts posted at least three images of Trump that had been photoshopped to make him look thinner and his fingers longer. It’s not clear if Trump himself ordered those images to be changed, but it speaks to the kind of upside-down world of insecurity that MAGA creates.

But fascist lies don’t always take the form of digital manipulation. El Salvador’s President Bukele tried his own kind of in-person hoax by bringing out “margaritas” when Sen. Van Hollen met with Abrego Garcia. Bukele was clearly trying to make it look like Abrego Garcia was living it up in an island paradise despite the fact that he had been living in CECOT, a notorious prison filled with torture and slave labor.

Trump has defied a Supreme Court order and refuses to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., which means this country is currently experiencing a constitutional crisis that many people have yet to acknowledge. Trump told Moran that he “could” bring back Abrego Garcia if he wanted. But he’s not going to do that. And while that’s incredibly frustrating, at least we learned something from Tuesday’s interview. Trump isn’t always knowingly lying. Sometimes he’s just a credulous dolt.