There’s a morally bankrupt kind of thinking that’s taken hold among some centrists and centrist Democrats regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man Trump disappeared to an El Salvador gulag without due process. Trump won in part on the issue of immigration, the thinking goes, and therefore Democrats must do everything possible to look tough on the issue – or at least not look soft.

This is wrong.

The ghouls in the administration have called Abrego Garcia, who has no criminal record, every scary name in the book: criminal, gang member, terrorist. To underscore this narrative, on Wednesday the White House trotted out the mother of a woman raped and murdered by an undocumented immigrant in 2023. Notably, the killer was not Abrego Garcia. In fact, the killer got more due process than he did.

It was an outrageous attempt at guilt-by-association, meant to justify the Trump regime black-bagging Abrego Garcia and hundreds of others without due process so they could be imprisoned in the aforementioned gulag, courtesy of our tax dollars in an arrangement that’s likely illegal.

But to hear Gavin Newsom tell it, all this talk is a “distraction.” At a press conference on Wednesday, the governor of California and surefire 2028 Democratic presidential candidate was asked about the husband and father of three. This was Newsom’s rambling and cowardly response:

Yeah, you know, this is the distraction of the day. The art of distraction. Don’t get distracted by distractions, we say. And here, we zig and zag. This is the debate they want. This is their 80/20 issue, as they’ve described it. You know, those that believe in the rule of law, defending it, but it’s a tough case because people are really— Are they defending MS-13? Are they defending, you know, someone who’s out of sight, out of mind in El Salvador? I mean, we’re perfect sheep.

So I wanna answer your question. I don’t know I add much value answering it. I mean, are you kidding me? Come on. I remember, I saw some pundit the other day, say, “I remember that Newsom guy when he did gay marriage in 2004 The hell’s he talking about? He’s kept marrying people, 4,036 couples from 46 states and six countries. What about the rule of law? Maybe they forgot. The judges said there was no irreparable harm. And when the judges, the California Supreme Court, said we should stop, we stopped immediately. It wasn’t even in question. When a judge adjudicates, it’s not a question.

How in the hell are we even debating that? It’s Orwellian that you’re debating that, and it’s exactly the debate they want because they don’t want this debate on the tariffs. They don’t wanna be accountable to markets today. They don’t wanna answer for Nvidia taking a $5.5 billion charge. They don’t wanna have a real conversation with Christine and what’s going on in terms of the export uncertainty here in the valley. They wanna have this conversation. Don’t get distracted by distractions. We’re all perfect sheep.

This barely coherent reply is not unlike some Trumpian stream of consciousness, a weave, if you will. The question was about a man deported and imprisoned without due process. Instead of addressing it head-on and vociferously denouncing due process-free deportations and giving a full-throated endorsement of the rule of law, Newsom deployed a verbal Rube Goldberg machine that hit on gay marriage, a vague mention of the rule of law, tariffs, and Nvidia before ultimately not even accomplishing the task at hand.

This was not the response of a leader. This was the response of a coward refusing to defend human rights because the people whose rights were violated have been convicted in the court of Trump, an utterly lawless venue. They may not know it, but Newsom and others who won’t condemn this moral and legal outrage send the awful message that so long as Trump manages to smear this person and that person as a criminal or a gang member or a terrorist or a threat to national security, good liberals will shut up about whatever’s being done to those undesirables.

Way too many so-called moderates say this is a smart approach because they are morons who think it’s preferable to play by the ever-changing rules the right has put forth instead of sticking to the ones we all internalized at a young age: democracy, due process, rule of law, human rights. The country has failed to live up to these over the years, but if the Democratic Party nominates a guy who thinks these are a “distraction,” we’re in deep trouble.