Yesterday we reported that Vice President JD Vance had said his planned meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to discuss the ongoing coverup of the Epstein files was fake news. Well, it turns out, he was lying: They held the meeting anyway, but at the White House rather than at the VP’s residence. So they lied about their secret meeting about lying about the Epstein files. Happy Friday.

A Conversation with Andry

by Tim Miller

What happens to a man after he’s been resurrected from hell?

When I talked to Andry Hernández Romero earlier this week, he tried to answer this question. Andry explained why he wanted to come to America. How he was treated in our hands. The disgusting and unconscionable abuse that he was subjected to an infamous Salvadoran prison. His hopes for freedom and so much more.

The entire discussion was remarkable because he is remarkable. Not just his sense of humor and unshakable faith in God in light of all that has happened. But, most of all, his empathy and mercy for those who were responsible for his persecution.

It’s hard not to contrast Andry’s mercy and forbearance with the small, sad grievances that dominate America’s political life today. Our current regime is powered by anger at a hundred perceived sleights: too many brown people at Harvard; a book with gay penguins; a swimmer who didn’t get the 4th place trophy she felt she deserved; having less than the Joneses.

Half of America fetishizes and perseverates in its discontent over these sleights. How dare they make a movie where the fictional mermaid is a black girl!

Meanwhile, the guy who came to America looking to make a life for himself is locked away in a foreign dungeon because he had the wrong tattoos. He was tortured, raped, and left for dead. He wasn’t even allowed the dignity of a call to his mother.

This avalanche of trauma was piled onto him because the luckiest people in the history of the world were convinced that the immigrant down the street might eat their cat.

And how does Andry react to his mistreatment? Here’s what he told me:

And what I can say to the people, to President Trump, and to everyone watching this podcast is, let’s be more empathetic, let’s be more, more humane, knowing that we can’t make firewood from a fallen tree. . . . Let’s be more empathetic and not destroy others, because no one likes to be talked down to, let’s not kick a dead horse, because, it’s easy to speak badly of someone, but we don’t like people talking badly about them. So, as a relative told me, everyone is going to throw stones at the tree that bears fruit.

What a remarkable sense of grace. It’s unimaginable, really, to have been treated like a feral hog by the most powerful man in the world and still manage to summon this generosity and forbearance.

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The most moving part of our conversation was when Andry talked about the bonds he created with the other prisoners who were kidnapped with him. How he made plans to do the hair and makeup for the weddings of some of the men who were in cells at CECOT and are now planning their renewed life.

The way his face lit up and the love with which he discussed his fellow prisoners reminded me of the only other time I had the chance to hear directly from survivors of political internment.