At a press briefing on Friday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) spoke about a controversy surrounding margaritas during his meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Sen. Van Hollen says the glasses were placed there by a government official.
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00:01Now I just want to take a moment. I hadn't planned to do this, but as I was landing on the airplane, I got a transcript of some questions President Trump was asked at the White House today about what I would call Margaritagate. I hope you guys have been following this.
00:21President Buttigieg, after I met with Kilmar, did this tweet showing us at a table with these two glasses. So here's what happened. When I first sat down with Kilmar, we just had glasses of water on the table, I think maybe some coffee.
00:43And as we were talking, one of the government people came over and deposited two other glasses on the table with ice and I don't know if it was salt or sugar around the top, but they looked like margaritas.
01:01And if you look at the one they put in front of Kilmar, it actually had a little less liquid than the one in front of me to try to make it look, I assume, like he drank out of it.
01:13Let me just be very clear. Neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us. And if you want to play a little Sherlock Holmes, I'll tell you how you can know that.
01:23So if you look at the video or the picture I sent out from the beginning of our meeting, you'll see there are no glasses on the table. So you'll see in later videos they are on the table.
01:36But they made a little mistake for some people who are very careful, right? If you sip out of one of those glasses, some of whatever it was, salt or sugar, would disappear.
01:46You would see a gap. There's no gap. Nobody drank any margaritas or sugar water or whatever it is. But this is a lesson. It's the lengths that President Bukele will do to deceive people about what's going on.
02:02And it also shows the lengths that the Trump administration or the President will go to. Because when he was asked about a reporter about this, he just went along for the ride.
02:13So the White House and the President have been lying about this case from the beginning. They've been trying to change the subject from the beginning.
02:22As I said, and the courts have said, from the Supreme Court to the Fourth Circuit to the District Court, what this is about is adhering to the Constitution, to the right of due process.
02:37And that's why we say, bring Kilmar home. So he can be afforded his rights under the Constitution.
02:46That's what this is about.