Vance flubs key details after the Trump admin acknowledged an ‘administrative error.’
Among other things, the vice president really ought to know that the Biden administration didn’t exist in 2019.

It was against this backdrop that JD Vance decided to add some related thoughts to the public conversation, which did not go especially well for the vice president. NBC News reported:

Vice President JD Vance weighed into the case and falsely said on X Tuesday that Garcia was a “convicted MS-13 gang member.” Garcia has no criminal convictions in the U.S. or in El Salvador, his legal team said in the lawsuit. In a follow-up post on X Tuesday, Vance stood by his comments and called Garcia “an illegal immigrant with no right to be in our country,” despite the 2019 protection order against his removal from the U.S.

Even for a vice president who routinely struggles with factual details, this was a mess.

Initially, the Ohio Republican, by way of social media, took aim at a journalist who'd fact-checked him and said that Garcia was a “convicted” gang member, which wasn’t true and which was not supported by the administration’s own court filing.....

Usually, when Republicans get this wrong, they claim that Joe Biden was in the White House in 2020, despite the fact that the Democrat was inaugurated in January 2021. Vance flubbed this even more dramatically, however, suggesting that Biden was president in the third year of Trump’s first term.

As for Garcia, he remains in El Salvador, though his case is scheduled to be heard this week by a judge in Maryland. Watch this space.