On Monday night, CNN host Chris Cuomo spent the last four minutes of his show and even extending into the first few minutes of Don Lemon's show ranting against President Donald Trump's new policy dealing with illegal immigrant families detained on the border as he accused the administration of "lying" about family separation.
Closing out his Cuomo Prime Time show, Cuomo seized on the sad case of a five-year-old child from Central America who was separated from her grandmother in July after they crossed the border illegally as the CNN host claimed that it was proof that President Trump was lying about ending the family separation policy from the spring.
But, even during the Obama administration, there were always some cases in which children were separated from adults -- usually if the adult was believed either to not be the real parent, might be a danger to the child, or had a criminal history.
But Cuomo cited the case as evidence that Trump had lied about ending the zero tolerance policy, and he also denounced the recently announced new policy of giving parents the option of whether to keep their children with them while they are detained until the end of their cases, or whether to send the child to other facilities or guardians.
This to Cuomo somehow amounts to much the same thing as the previous zero tolerance policy even though the parents would be given a choice.
Without informing viewers that, even during previous administrations, there has been a questionable practice of making small children appear in court and speak for themselves, Cuomo began the segment by recalling the five-year-old child who had to sign her first name to a legal document and, seemingly because of a bureaucratic mistake, was not transported to her mother as initially promised for months.
Cuomo did not mention that, according to the New Yorker article which he used as a source, the child had almost fallen into the Rio Grande where she could have drowned as her grandmother transported her in a raft, which may explain why authorities preferred not to return custody to her but instead to give her to her mother who was living elsewhere in the U.S. already.
The CNN host provocatively added: "I wish I could tell you the kids are home from the border and that the policy has changed, but that would be a damn lie because this has been an exercise in deception from the start." He then claimed that it was "BS" when Trump declared that he was ending the zero tolerance policy that was leading to most of the family separations.
He then claimed "the policy is the same way it always was for all practical effect."
After Lemon came on and the two spoke with each other about the issue for a few minutes, Cuomo claimed that the Trump administration are "lyiing about it, and we keep catching them."
