What I say in the book is that every wealthy country went through some restructuring to deal with changes in the global economy, competition, rising oil prices, you know, every rich country in Europe.

No other countries so gleefully assaulted the institutions that could have ameliorated

that restructuring, as did the United States.

Hello, and welcome to why is this happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.

I'm speaking to you during the week in which the president of El Salvador,

President Buchele, came to the White House and met with President Trump in a pretty appalling spectacle in the Oval Office, which we're sort of used to appalling spectacles in the Oval Office now.

But at issue, of course, is the fact that the U.S. government has contracted with Buckelay's government in El Salvador to, for a fee, essentially, as a kind of like paid contractor, take people that the Trump administration deems with no due process,

terrorists and criminals, and render them to this infamous prison that Buckele has built for what he says are the worst, the worst in a country that really has had been besieged by gang violence,

largely MS-13, which is the gang born here in the U.S. that we exported to El Salvador,

fun fact.

And so they're sitting in the Oval Office, and one of the things that really kind of

snapped into my mind and a lot of people's minds was like, oh, these two guys are peas in a pod.

These are two of the same kind.

Like, their ease with each other, the fact that they're kind of pursuing the same project.

Buckely has massively consolidated power in El Salvador. He has used the genuine and real

threat of gang violence to trample human rights and due process and to create a very,

you know, powerful central authority. Watching these two guys sort of rib each other and laugh and

kind of do this like really appalling

gaslighting of the American press like, oh, you want to send back in someone wrongly deported?

Like what am I supposed to do?

Smuggle him into the country and then Trump's saying, well, what are we going to do?

Violate his sovereignty.

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