More than a year after his administration implemented the state-sanctioned kidnapping of children at the southern border, Donald Trump is still lying about the humanitarian crisis he created.
Trump sat down for an interview with Telemundo’s José Díaz-Balart, where he lied about the usual, like taking credit for President Obama’s Veterans Choice health care program, and the laughable, like falsely claiming he’s gaining huge support from “the Hispanics” because they “want toughness at the border.” But the most shameless lying was regarding his humanitarian disaster at the border.
“The ‘zero tolerance’ policy, was that a mistake?” Díaz-Balart asked. “When I became president, President Obama had a separation policy,” Trump replied, lying. “I didn’t have it, he had it. I brought the families together. I’m the one that put them together.” Díaz-Balart knew this was a pile of lies and would say so just a few moments later, but first laid out the scale of Trump’s disastrous policy to his face.
”2,800 children were reunited with their parents in the last year,” he told Trump. “We don’t even know—the government doesn’t even know how many children are still not with their parents. They don’t know, which I find incredible.” Trump tries to go back to blaming an “Obama plan,” but Díaz-Balart, sensing the imminent bullshit rant, begins to tell Trump that, no, we’re talking about what he did. “Sir, we’re talking about your plan.”
“I’m the one that put people together, they separated, I put them together,” Trump tried to counter. ”You did not,” Díaz-Balart informs him. “2,800 children were reunited with their parents in this last year after the ‘zero tolerance’ policy separated thousands of them.” Trump replied, “Excuse me, because I put them together,” of course not all seeking to be excused. “That’s because I put them together.”
Díaz-Balart, without missing a beat, replies, “Under court order, I might add, right?” Yup, because it was only under a federal judge’s order that the administration began to reunite these families, and it’s been only under court order that the administration is now tracking down other children who were separated before his policy was officially in place. Officials have so far identified 1,712 additional kids, and because they’re only partly through that court-mandated recount, there could be thousands more.
A year after Trump signing an executive order supposedly ending the policy his administration created, kids are still getting separated from families. While certainly on a smaller scale than last year’s disaster, it doesn’t make it any less devastating. These families must be reunited—and we know who separated them in the first place. Trump and his Republican accomplices own it—and we need to make sure they don’t forget it.