In case it wasn’t clear that the mainstream media is ill-equipped to act as a bulwark against Donald Trump’s authoritarianism, look no further than Sunday’s travesty authored by Dana Bash.

Bash interviewed Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who hit the Sunday shows to discuss his meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia last week in El Salvador. Abrego Garcia is one of hundreds of non-citizens the Trump regime rounded up and sent to a gulag in that country without due process in a gross violation of human rights, the U.S. Constitution, and more than 800 years of English common law. Multiple federal courts have ordered Trump to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., but Trump has refused by pretending to be powerless over bargain bin dictator Nayib Bukele, who is getting $6 million from American taxpayers to imprison the deportees.

More than any other genre of news program, the Sunday shows embody the worst tendencies of mainstream political journalism. That’s because the programs are hosted by people who generally believe that their goal is to be tough on, but fair to both Republicans and Democrats. They’re the sort of people who believe that if both sides are mad at them, that means they’ve done a good job.

In “normal” times, this approach is merely annoying. But when one side is openly fascist, the problem here becomes glaring. Look no further than last May, when Meet the Press host Kristen Welker – out of an abundance of fairness – said Trump “allegedly” tried to overturn the 2020 election, even though Trump did so in plain sight and even admitted to doing it, saying he had “every right” to do it.

Fast-forward to Sunday, when Bash noted that Trump had accused Abrego Garcia of being an MS-13 gang member. Interesting, she failed to mention the fact that Trump posted a doctored photo of Abrego Garcia’s left hand showing tattoos with the characters, “M, S, 1, 3.”

Bash asked Van Hollen [emphasis mine] the following:

Now, President Trump says that some of Abrego Garcia’s tattoos signify that he’s a member of MS-13. In 2019, police alleged a confidential informant claimed that Abrego Garcia was an active MS-13 member. His wife and his attorney deny that, of course. Can you say with absolute certainty that he is not, nor has he ever been, a member of the MS-13 gang? And did you ask him point-blank?

The question makes an utter mockery of how we’re supposed to think about guilt and innocence. Not only is her question patently backward, but her framing places a higher burden on the accused. In court, prosecutors must demonstrate that a defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But on CNN’s State of the Union, an advocate for the accused is being asked to express “absolute certainty” that Abrego Garcia is not in a gang. And by the way, being in a gang is not in and of itself a crime.

Van Hollen responded:

Well, Dana, what Donald Trump is trying to do here is change the subject. The subject at hand is that he and his administration are defying a court order to give people to give Abrego Garcia his due process rights. They are trying to litigate on social media what they should be doing in the courts. They need to put up or shut up in the courts.

Let me tell you – and I decided to write this down so I could be absolutely accurate as to what federal district court Judge Xinis said about these allegations by the Trump administration – quote, “no evidence linking Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or any terrorist activity has been presented to the court.”

That’s where to litigate this. It’s been litigated in many other places. So, I’m not gonna get into the details because the whole purpose of our court system is for them to adjudicate these things, not for Donald Trump to go off on social media.

Bash responded by conceding the point, stating, “Yeah, you’re right. They have not. There hasn’t been a court hearing for them to put forward evidence in the first place, which is your whole point.” But instead of taking the L, she thought it was nonetheless a good time to press Van Hollen on whether he asked Abrego Garcia about allegedly being in MS-13:

But since you were the one person to have met with him, and since this is a thing you say on social media, it’s what we hear from Donald Trump and Republicans every day, all day long, you didn’t ask him?

Van Hollen replied by making it clear to Bash that her line of questioning is exactly what Trump wants:

I didn’t ask him that because I know what his answer is. What he told me was he was sad and traumatized that he was being in prison because he has committed no crimes. And that goes to the heart of this issue, because he’s being denied his due process rights. And Donald Trump is trying to change the subject. And when people start asking that question, in my view, they’re falling into the president’s trap because what the president wants to do is talk about that as if we can’t all fight gang violence, which I’ve been doing for much longer than Donald Trump.

Though I can’t say this with “absolute certainty,” I don’t think Bash wants to see Abrego Garcia imprisoned without due process. As far as I can tell, she’s a normie news host who believes in due process, the rule of law, democracy, and so forth. For the vast majority of people who also believe these things, I don’t think it would even occur to them to ask Van Hollen if he’s dead certain Abrego Garcia is not in a gang. And the reason they wouldn’t ask is because they’re not Sunday talkshow hosts for whom pressing Democrats using Republican talking points takes precedence over the moral outrage staring them right in the face.

Video courtesy of CNN.