W.Va. Rep. Riley Moore gives El Salvador prison CECOT two thumbs up
Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., toured the El Salvador prison CECOT on Tuesday, April 15, 2025, and posted a photo of himself giving two thumbs up in front of prisoners on his X account. (Rep. Riley Moore X account)
If a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives and third generation member of a political dynasty taking a selfie and posing with double thumbs up while dressed in his business casual in front of stripped down inmates in a foreign country as part of a PR campaign for a controversial and legally suspect American policy to send more individuals there sounds wrong, it is because it is.
Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., took a trip away from his 2nd Congressional District of West Virginia and his Washington, D.C. office to El Salvador to get what is becoming a highly-sought photo-op for GOP members these days. Inside the CECOT prison with a background of caged inmates, Moore took a selfie, a posed picture with his thumbs up. To this he, or his social media intern, added two photos of inmates, a few lines about murderers and rapists, then, 'I leave now even more determined to support President Trump's efforts to secure our homeland' and posted it to his social media accounts.
Not mentioned in the PR campaign is how CECOT is the lynchpin of El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele's political persona. Bukele's rise to power was on the promise to crack down on crime, which as president he has mercilessly done while incarcerating tens of thousands in the process. Filling up CECOT with 'brutal criminals, including murderers, rapists, pedophiles and terrorists' made him extremely popular. Which is step one in the dictator's playbook. The following steps came next. Bukele consolidated power and popularity by going after 'they' and 'them' and 'those' because how dare you quibble over due process and 'rights' for gang members. Then came ignoring laws, marching armed soldiers into the Legislative Assembly, and serving his current term in direct violation of the constitution with some good, old fashioned court packing to approve it.
CECOT isn't just a prison; it's a symbol of taking care of a problem — extremely high crime — and also a living warning that the crime can return, and anyone who dares question the methods of keeping all that bad at bay will find themselves in the mass cells themselves. 'Without me, this' while pointing at the worst of the worst is the power hungry dictator's soundbite version of sine qua non. And far too often, as history shows again and again, it works.
Easy to see why President Donald Trump is using CECOT as his tool of choice for the deportation policy he is pursuing. Bukele is walking proof of what history has shown again and again about responding to fear and how a strongman can capitalize on that fear. Immigration is Trump's highest polling issue, even as his numbers continue to slip on everything else. The rhetoric of the two leaders has plenty of overlap, with the ends of stopping criminals justifying the means. Even when the means are legally suspect and innocent people become collateral damage. Thus the military planes instead of commercial airliners, the highly-produced videos of the deportations and brutal intake into CECOT, the obstinance against any pushback legal, moral or otherwise. The bad has to be bad enough to excuse the bad of how it is being done to otherwise good people who would just say 'no, this is bad.'
The answers to any challenge will mirror those of Trump and Bukele, the surrogates in the media, and the army of social media accounts all falling in line to the policy without bothering with those sticky little details like the law, due process, and unintended consequences. Daring to bring those issues up means you are with the bad people, not with the good people. Bukele, who openly brags about being 'the world's coolest dictator' understands that popularity on one big issue brings power over all other issues.
Holding a Master's degree from National Defense University and having previously been a staffer for the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, it isn't that Moore doesn't know this background, or understand how dictatorships take hold, or couldn't have dug deeper into why the Trump Administration is using El Salvador. It is well within his purview to do a fact-finding trip on the process and policy. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee Moore is positioned to have more influence, should he choose to use it, than the average freshman representative normally would, even members whose aunts aren't the sitting senior U.S. Senator from the state represented.
He just doesn't care. Moore chose to be at the front of the line of the PR campaign posing with thumbs up in a brutal foreign prison instead of using his elected office to ask the basic and self-evident question: why our president was using CECOT in the first place. Moore pinned to the top of his X account that seeing the 'brutal criminals, including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and terrorists' leaves him 'even more determined to support President Trump's efforts.' The popularity of the policy to the base of his party is a path to his own future power, and why mess that up by bothering the electorate with lectures on laws and morals that go against their politically pliable feels?
Moore wanted to tell all of us something very important about himself with that El Salvador selfie. Believe him.
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