Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
The problem with theories like this is that motivated reasoning leads one to the desired conclusion without considering that similar motivation can just as easily lead to other, equally plausible conclusions. So the marijuana leaf supposedly is a stand-in for the M in MS 13. Okay, but the plant has so many colloquial names that it would work with other letters as well. So it could also be a C (cannibas), or P (pot), or W (weed), or even L (leaf), or any number of other things. Then go to the smiley face for S, except that it could also just be F for face. And then it gets ridiculous. The cross is supposed to be a coverup for a 1. Or it's commonly used as a stand-in for a 1 (I've never heard this before, and I can't find any support for it online). And the skull is a coverup for a 3, which seems highly unlikely since there's nothing even remotely resembling a 3 in the skull. Or maybe the the two eyes and nose mean 3 (but the two eyes in the smiley face don't mean 2?). OR maybe skull in Spanish is clavera and 3 is the third letter of the alphabet, though cross in Spanish is cruz, so MS 33? Or maybe he just decided to mix a bunch of pictograms together like a bad metaphor. Or maybe the cross really means X and it's actually WF33. Or WD40.
In all seriousness, if you want to use any of this as evidence, you need to find a qualified expert to testify that these are actually MS-33 gang tattoos, not rely on crowdsourced Twitter speculation.
I'd assume you would need to use Spanish for that. I also have been told by reliable sources that using the word "marijuana" is racist, so not sure it can be even mentioned by a proper expert.
I would assume the guys who made the photo that Trump showed around would be called "experts" at least by the current administration and would gladly testify that these signs mean MS-13 (I assume 33 is a typo here). After all, they told so to the president, if they aren't sure that's what it is they would be majorly screwed. The problem is the other side could claim those people know nothing and they are lying and they have got their own experts that are ready to testify that these tattoos actually mean "universal peace and love" and has absolutely no relationship to any gangs and anybody who is not a racist fascist knows that. I'm not sure where in our days it is still possible to find experts that haven't been claimed by any sides are would be universally acceptable.
For me personally, absence of alternative explanations and the fact that his wife insists on hiding the tattoos on all photos explains enough, but I'm not an expert, just a random dude on the internet.
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