W.Va. Rep. Riley Moore gives El Salvador prison CECOT two thumbs up

Apr 17, 2025

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.

–

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?

https://westvirginiawatch.com/2025/04/17/w-va-rep-riley-moore-gives-el-salvador-prison-cecot-two-thumbs-up/