The Los Angeles Times wants you to know that a man charged with plotting murder in Bolivia is "MAGA's Man" — even though his own collaborators say he was a fraud who could barely speak English.

The framing is the story. When a foreign political consultant with inflated credentials gets charged with a sordid crime, the press reaches for the "MAGA" label like a brand iron. When an actual attempted execution happens on American soil — a former Ohio prosecutor pressing a gun to his ex-wife's head inside a restaurant — it's just a crime story, no ideology required.

Fernando Cerimedo, 45, sits in a Bolivian maximum-security prison, accused of masterminding the attempted murder of his pregnant mistress, Nadia Beller, a 33-year-old lawyer and activist. Prosecutors say he arranged for assassins dressed as fast-food deliverymen to shoot Beller point-blank outside a Santa Cruz hotel on Aug. 17. She survived by feigning death. Cerimedo was arrested the next day trying to board a plane to Buenos Aires. He also faces investigation for alleged illegal enrichment and potential links to cocaine trafficking. He has denied any wrongdoing.

That's a crime story. But the Los Angeles Times frames it as an indictment of a political movement. The headline brands him "MAGA's Man in Latin America." The piece credits The Economist with the label and notes he was also called "the Steve Bannon of Latin America." It connects him to Argentine President Javier Milei and Tucker Carlson. It quotes Chilean journalist Daniel Matamala declaring that Cerimedo "looms like a ghost over the summit of the radical right."

Here's what the LA Times buries: even people who worked with the man say the label is a con. "I never really got the impression that Cerimedo was 'MAGA's man in Latin America,'" Damian Merlo, a Miami-based consultant who worked with Cerimedo on Milei's 2023 campaign, told the paper. "The guy could hardly speak English! But that's how he sold himself." Reports also revealed that Cerimedo's boasts — attending Harvard, training with Navy SEALs, working in the Obama White House — were, in the LA Times' own word, "fanciful."

The man was a grifter who inflated his own importance — and the press is happy to inflate it further, so long as the inflation damages the right target.

Now consider what gets the straight crime treatment. Matthew Exton, a 43-year-old former attorney and local prosecutor in Ohio, was convicted Sept. 4 of attempted murder after surveillance footage showed him pressing a handgun to his ex-wife Kada Malone's head at point-blank range inside a Toledo restaurant, according to Fox News. The gun didn't fire because the safety was still on. A waiter tackled him before he could try again. There was a round in the chamber and seven more in the magazine. Exton had left Malone a voicemail referencing the Johnny Cash lyric "Sooner or later God will cut you down." In court, after the verdict, he screamed those same lyrics and made a gun gesture at an assistant prosecutor.

An actual attempted execution on American soil. A former officer of the court. Eight rounds at the ready. No ideological lens applied. No movement branded. Just the facts.

That's how it should be — for both cases. A crime is a crime. But the press doesn't treat both cases that way. When they can link a criminal to the right, ideology is the story. When they can't, or won't, it's just another item in the blotter.

The question isn't whether Cerimedo is guilty — that's for a Bolivian court to decide. The question is why American media needs him to be "MAGA's Man" when his own colleagues say he was just a salesman peddling tall tales.