‘You’re not being very nice’: Trump clashes with ABC interviewer over edited Ábrego García photo
In a pre-recorded interview that went out last night on ABC News to mark his 100th day in office, Donald Trump clashed with reporter Terry Moran over his tariff policies, deportations and the power of the presidency.
In an intense, fiery exchange over the knuckle tattoos of Kilmar Ábrego García – the man the US government deported to El Salvador by mistake – Trump got into a surreal back-and-forth with Moran over whether Ábrego García has the gang name “MS-13” tattooed on his knuckles, apparently confusing a photoshopped image he once posted on social media with Ábrego García’s real hands.
It started with Moran pressing Trump on whether he acknowledges that under American law, every person is afforded due process. But Trump claimed that when people come to the country illegally “there’s a different standard”.
“But they get due process,” Moran said.
“Well, they get a process where we have to get ‘em out, yeah,” Trump said. “They get whatever my lawyers say.”
The Trump administration has indicated in court documents that Ábrego García was sent to El Salvador in an “administrative error” but White House officials have since disputed that and the lawyer who wrote that court document has been put on leave. Trump said in the interview that that lawyer “should not have said that”.
He then grew agitated when Moran suggested that the image had been photoshopped.
That was photoshop? Terry, you can’t do that. They’re giving you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you’re doing the interview. I picked you because – frankly I never heard of you but that’s ok. But I picked you, Terry, but you’re not being very nice.
Here is the clip of the exchange:
TRUMP: He had MS-13 on his knuckles, tattooed!
MORAN: That was photoshopped
TRUMP: Terry, they’re giving you the big break of a lifetime. I picked you. But you’re not being very nice. pic.twitter.com/NgCpEB8o1S
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 30, 2025
Key events
President Donald Trump is continuing to push for even stricter immigration policies in his first cabinet meeting after celebrating 100 days in office.
“We have to get the criminals out of this country,” Trump said. “That’s the basis on which we won this election.”
His comments come at a time when the president’s approval rating has flipped amid ongoing and frequent cases of people in the US being detained by Ice, as well as controversial deportations.
Top US pork processor Smithfield Foods said China, the world’s biggest pork consumer, is no longer a viable market because of retaliatory tariffs, Reuters reports.
“With China no longer essentially being available, we’ve really had to pivot our business,” president and CEO Shane Smith said on a quarterly earnings call.
China reportedly represents about 3% of Smithfield’s sales. Various cuts of meat that are less consumed in the US, such as pig stomachs, hearts and heads are often shipped there.
Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform accused CBS of having “cheated and defrauded” Americans amid an ongoing legal case against the network for how they edited an interview with presidential candidate Kamala Harris leading up to the 2024 election.
“The case we have against 60 Minutes, CBS, and Paramount is a true WINNER. They cheated and defrauded the American People at levels never seen before in the Political Arena,” the president wrote.
He also singled out the New York Times, referring to the publication as “Fake News both in writing and polling” and accused the paper of having a “non curable case of TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME”.
“The bottom line is that what 60 Minutes and its corporate owners have committed is one of the most egregious illegalities in Broadcast History,” Trump wrote. “Nothing like this, the illegal creation of an answer for a Presidential Candidate, has ever been done before, they have to pay a price for it, and the Times should also be on the hook for their likely unlawful behavior. It is vital to hold these Liars and Fraudsters accountable!”
Federal judge in Vermont orders immediate release of Columbia student and green card holder Mohsen Mahdawi
Anna Betts
A federal judge in Vermont has ordered the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green card holder and student at Columbia University who was detained by the Trump administration on 14 April.
Mahdawi greeted supporters as he walked out of immigration detention on Wednesday and thanked them for their support.
Mahdawi was arrested by Ice in Colchester, Vermont, while attending a naturalization interview. He is one of a number of international students who has been detained in recent months for their advocacy on behalf of Palestinians.
Attorneys for Mahdawi, a lawful permanent US resident, argued that he was being unlawfully detained in “retaliation for his speech advocating for Palestinian human rights” and say that it is “part of a policy intended to silence and chill the speech of those who advocate for Palestinian human rights”.
Kristi Noem defends Trump border pick accused of ‘cover-up’ over death of man beaten by US agents
Chris Stein
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem has defended Rodney Scott, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead Customs and Border Protection (CBP), after a Democratic senator and former CBP official accused him of mishandling the investigation into the 2010 death of a man detained while trying to enter the country from Mexico.
Scott’s confirmation hearing began a few minutes ago before the Senate finance committee, whose ranking member Ron Wyden last week wrote to Noem with concerns that his handling of the death of Anastasio Hernández Rojas was “deeply troubling”.
“The minority’s uninformed account of Mr Scott’s alleged role in the 2010 investigation of the death of Mr Anastasio Hernandez Rojas was infuriating and offensive to read,” Noem wrote in reply.
Wyden had questioned Scott’s authorization of an administrative subpoena to obtain Hernández Roja’s medical records. Hernández Roja died after being beaten and tased by CBP agents who were preparing him for deportation, following his arrest for crossing into the San Diego area from Mexico.
Noem rejected Wyden’s attacks, saying, “Mr Scott did not impede any investigation, nor did he take steps to conceal facts from investigators” and that his use of the subpoena was “consistent with law and agency policy”.
The secretary also said that James Wong, a former top CBP internal affairs official who in a letter to Wyden accused Scott of orchestrating “a cover-up” was “assigned to a wholly separate component of CBP”.
“Your public disclosure of these false allegations demonstrates the reckless nature of partisan politics. The plain explanation offered to the committee in this letter would have been better addressed in private to avoid tarnishing Mr Scott’s sterling reputation,” Noem wrote to Wyden.
Supreme court considers endorsing country’s first religious public charter school
Rachel Leingang
I’m watching arguments at the US supreme court this morning, where the court is deciding whether to allow the country’s first public religious charter school to open, weighing a case that would grant an Oklahoma Catholic virtual charter school approval.
St Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual school is at issue in the case, which combines lawsuits brought by the ACLU and other groups, plus a lawsuit from the Republican state attorney general, Gentner Drummond. The state charter school board approved the application for St Isidore, which the state supreme court struck down. The case was appealed to the US supreme court.
The case is part of a broader push to erode the separation of church and state, a concept established through the US constitution via the “free exercise” clause of the first amendment, which prohibits the state from establishing a religion and affirmed through case law over the past century. Oklahoma is at the forefront of this push against church and state separation.
The eventual ruling is seen as a test of the role of religion in the government and in schools. It comes as school choice programs like vouchers that allow students to use public monies to attend private schools grow nationwide and amid a sustained campaign against public schools.
House GOP blocks Democrats from forcing votes on Signal scandal and Musk conflicts of interest
House Republicans moved on Tuesday to block Democrats from forcing votes on the Trump administration’s use of Signal, potential conflicts of interest involving Elon Musk and other controversial topics, the Hill reports.
The move by the conference – approved in a 216-208 vote – marks the latest instance of Republicans using procedural rules, which govern debate for legislation, to shield Donald Trump’s administration from scrutiny.
Democrats have filed a number of resolutions of inquiry throughout the first 100 days of the Trump administration, including measures requesting information about the administration’s now-infamous use of Signal – the encrypted messaging platform officials including defense secretary Pete Hegseth have used to discuss sensitive information – as well as potential conflicts of interest involving Musk and the impact his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has had on local economies and communities.
Per the Hill, speaker Mike Johnson defended the GOP effort shortly before its approval on Tuesday, saying the conference was “using the rules of the House to prevent political hijinks and political stunts”.
They showed us over the last four years, last eight years – they used lawfare, they used conspiracy theories, all these political weapons to just go after the president and make his life miserable. That’s not what the American people voted for, that’s not what they deserve. We can do better, so we’re preventing this nonsensical waste of our time. We don’t have time to waste.
We’re not out of the 100-day woods just yet. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries are holding a news conference at 2.30pm ET, and later this evening former vice-president Kamala Harris will re-emerge for her first major speech since leaving office. Stepping back into the spotlight for a keynote speech in San Francisco, Harris is expected to deliver her most extensive critique yet of Trump’s presidency. We’ll be here to bring you any key lines from those.
‘Twilight Zone’: Defense attorney says Trump ‘flouting’ supreme court over Kilmar Ábrego García case
CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson has called Trump’s most recent comments that he “could” but won’t bring back Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, “bizarre and the twilight zone”.
Jackson told CNN this morning that Trump is “flouting” the supreme court:
We’re in very troubling and difficult times, and I don’t want to overstate it at all. But I do want to be objective and I want to be fair and I want to be honest. People talk about a constitutional crisis. The reality is, that we are in a constitutional crisis as we speak right now, that reality is plain and apparent. We have a supreme court of the United States who said to facilitate the process. I don’t know how much we can debate with you right now as to what your meaning of facilitate is and what mine is. But it’s very clear with respect to what you need to do, picking up the phone would be that. So when you have a situation where the president of the United States is ignoring a co-equal branch of government, that’s troubling, problematic, and very concerning, and so, yes, he’s indicating that he’s flouting it.
Referring to the administration lawyer who was put on leave after purportedly failing to defend the administration vigorously enough, Jackson said:
Remember what the administration did to an attorney, the Department of Justice, who was in court and was honest, the judge asking him questions as judges do, and the judge giving the indication of, hey, you know what? What happened here? Oh, it was a mistake. I can’t get a clear answer, said the US department of justice attorney for my client, with respect, the government with regard to what happened here, that person was fired. And so we’re in bizarre times in the Twilight Zone. This is not how it’s supposed to work. It’s working that way. And that’s troubling.
He later added:
You have co-equal branches of government. Each has a role, and when a supreme court of the United States tells you to do something, you do it. There’s no question about that. There’s no flouting what facilitate means to that. You just comply. There’s not compliance here. That, to me, is not democracy. That’s totalitarianism, and we’re in an abyss. We’re in a problem, and I’m just wondering where we go from here.
‘Fight the billionaire takeover’: Trump’s Scottish golf course targeted by Greenpeace sand protest
Golfers teeing off at Trump Turnberry in Scotland on Wednesday would have been oblivious to Greenpeace’s protest against the US president on the sand a few hundred metres away, which was only properly visible from the air, writes Reuters.
Environmental group Greenpeace said its activists raked Donald Trump’s portrait into the sandy beach alongside the message: “Time to resist – fight the billionaire takeover”.
The group released aerial footage of the image which was about half the size of a football pitch to mark the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, during which time the US has left the Paris climate agreement and bolstered American coal and oil projects.
BREAKING: A giant protest artwork targeting Donald Trump has appeared beside his Turnberry golf course.
The 55m by 40m artwork appeared overnight, urging people: “Time to resist – fight the billionaire takeover.” pic.twitter.com/ZbUyrxjFZN
— The National (@ScotNational) April 30, 2025
For Trump Turnberry, it is the second time in two months protesters have targeted the luxury golf resort, located on the west coast of Scotland, 50 miles south of Glasgow. Pro-Palestinian graffiti was daubed on walls at the course and “Gaza is not for sale” painted on one of the greens on 8 March, after Trump mused about turning Gaza into the “riviera of the Middle East”.
Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said in a statement:
During his first 100 days President Trump has been actively working to dismantle and weaken environmental protections and attack those who fight to protect nature and our shared climate.
‘I have faith that justice will prevail,’ says detained Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi ahead of hearing
Detained Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi has a hearing to request release today, where a judge will decide if he will be released or deported. In his first interview since his arrest, he told NPR: “I have faith that justice will prevail.”
Mahdawi, 34, has been in custody in Vermont since he was arrested on 14 April by masked Ice agents who showed up at an immigration office in Colchester, Vermont, where he had attended his naturalization interview and signed a document pledging allegiance to the US. He has a green card and he hasn’t been charged with a crime.
A lawful permanent US resident who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, Mahdawi is among multiple international students facing deportation by the Trump administration – ostensibly over their advocacy on several campuses against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The justice department on Monday submitted new court filings that included a two-page letter from secretary of state Marco Rubio stating that the “activities and presence of Mahdawi in the United States undermines US policy to combat antisemitism”. It also claimed that protests like those Mahdawi led at Columbia “potentially undermine the peace process underway in the Middle East”, where efforts for a ceasefire have stalled.
The court filing did not provide any evidence of the accusations against Mahdawi in the letter, including those of threatening rhetoric and intimidation of pro-Israeli bystanders. The government argues that the federal court in Vermont should not grant Mahdawi’s request for release because it does not have jurisdiction in foreign policy matters.
In response to the court filings, Mahdawi’s lawyer, Luna Droubi, said the accusations in the letter are “completely false.” Mahdawi has been very vocal in his opposition to antisemitism. She told NPR:
Mr. Mahdawi is a person of complete and full principle who believes in the human dignity of every person. The government’s just scraping at the bottom of the barrel to try to find something, anything that is simply leading to punishment of students for their advocacy for Palestinian rights.
