[Stelter:] We talk a lot about how pro-Trump narratives pick up steam through the media. But this next story appears to flip that script. Critics have helped propel a shocking story to the top of many people's social media timeline. The headline here says: Federal agency says it lost track of 1,475 migrant children. This story is actually one month old, but it's getting a ton of press this weekend thanks in part to liberal columnist and other journalists who are calling attention to it. It's agenda-setting 101. The overarching issue is what happens when immigrants enter the U.S. illegally. Unaccompanied minors get placed with sponsors, placed with sponsor families, but some of those kids disappear. Now, that was found at a Senate hearing almost exactly a month ago. Incredibly, it was just a one-day story at the time. It got a little bit of attention and then people moved on. I guess it was missing the human element, the pain and the agony of individual families. But the story is back now in part because of the Trump administration's new policy to break up more families, to break up families across the border. It's supposed to be a deterrent as Jeff Sessions made clear a couple weeks ago.
[Jeff Sessions, U.s. Attorney General:] If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you. And that child may be separated from you as required by law.
[Stelter:] OK, that's the policy. But let's back up here, what's really going on. Trump's key issue for the past three years has been illegal immigration, and whenever he watches Fox, he's reminded how his base feels about immigrants. Trump is angry that migrants keep coming across the border. It's so bad that the homeland security secretary almost resigned earlier this month. That was a one-day story too. So but this is the backdrop: more children will suffer now. But let's be clear, this has been going on for years. This is not just the Trump issue. The ACLU released a report on Wednesday alleging widespread abuse of migrant kids dating back many years. But that story about the kids who were missing now is back in the news thanks to some writers and reporters who have forced it back into the news. One day before the ACLU report came out last Tuesday, "Arizona Republic" columnist E.J. Montini helped put the issue back on the map by asking, hey, wait, before announcing a plan to separate more children from families, shouldn't there be a plan to adequately protect the children who are already here? On the same day, NBC News covered it on the ground in Texas with a really great story about the human element, interviewing people actually affected, and that was on Tuesday. And for some reason, I still can't quite figure out, this all went viral on Friday. In some cases, Websites were just repackaging last month's Senate hearing with snappier headlines, making it look more compelling. You can see here there were dozens of stories all of a sudden on Friday. MSNBC's Chris Hayes also called it out by interviewing immigrant advocates.
[Laura St. John, Immigrant Advocate:] What's happening right now is really unprecedented. We've actually seen children who are 2 years old regularly, and just last week, we saw a 53-week-old infant in court without a parent.
[Stelter:] Friday happened to be National Missing Kids Day, that might have been another element to propel this onto the national radar. In any case, we see lots of Democratic lawmakers, liberal columnists, trying to focus attention on this issue and it worked on Saturday when President Trump weighed in and tweeted about it. So, let's talk about it now. John Walsh and Daniel Dale are back with me. Daniel, you called out the president's tweet. He said, hey, he got to put pressure on the Democrats to end this horrible law that separates children from their parents, he misspelled the word there. Daniel, you said this was a big lie. Why?
[Dale:] Because there's no law that requires the Trump administration to separate children from their parents. This is a Trump administration policy that other administration officials have owned as their policy. Jeff Sessions, John Kelly, they said this is our policy you know for better or worse. So, Trump as he as he did with DACA seems to have gotten squeamish possibly because of all the coverage and is now telling Democrats who don't control Congress to end the law that does not exist, pretending that that his own policy is something that he is powerless to change.
[Stelter:] On "Fox and Friends", the other day, the president also said border crossings are down 40 percent right now. That's not true. Border crossings are up. Joan, what do you make of this?
[Walsh:] Well, border crossings are up, and he's very concerned about that Brian. And so, this is a new policy. We saw Jeff Sessions declare it. This does not go back to Democrats. So, it is a lie. Now, there are two things coming together here and I do think it's important that we that we pull them apart. There is a history of we had a tragedy of unaccompanied minors coming into the country. There were many
[Stelter:] During the Obama years.
[Walsh:] During the Obama years. That does go back to that was that happened not his fault but on his watch. There are kids that were probably lost during the Obama years, but what is happening now is while we cannot account for these children that were in our care, we are now cruelly adding more children, putting more children into a system that is obviously not keeping track of them, doing the cruelest thing imaginable and pulling babies little babies from their parents. There was a mother and this is where the symbolism becomes important there was a mother crying as her toddler taken away and she was given a yellow wristband, shades of Nazi Germany to mark her as a mother who had smuggled in a child and that smuggling of her own child is considered a crime. This used to be, if we caught people, often they would go back across the border, they would be deported but they would go together. Now, they're being detained. They're being separated. It is cruel. It is horrible and Trump is lying about it. And yet Trump and Sessions, they may say OK, this coverage it's working. It's having a deterrent effect. This is exactly what we want, to make sure people don't cross the border illegally. That isn't that maybe what they're saying but, you know, shooting people would actually have to be a deterrent effect. Are we going to start doing that? I mean, really, where do we draw the line in our cruelty?
[Stelter:] Daniel Dale, one more question about this: is this sort of the big lie you know we've been talking about when to call things lies when not to. You were saying that sometimes you try to define is falsehood or misleading statement because you don't know what the president's thinking. But in this case, you said it was a big lie. When do you make that determination that something is a lie? How do you do it personally?
[Dale:] You know, Brian, it's subjective. I you know, I can never quite know what the president is thinking. I think often if it's some quantitative complicated policy issue, I tend to give him more leeway. You know, we know he doesn't always understand that. If it's something that we have we were reasonably certain he has knowledge of, if it seems like he's just making something up out of thin air, I think I'm more inclined to call it a lie. But there's no there's no hard and fast formula, and I think you know sometimes even I can be too quick to jump to the word lie. I think we as journalists need to be
[Stelter:] Too quick.
[Dale:] Cautious about sticking to what we what we know for sure.
[Stelter:] I think some Trump fans would say, what do you mean too quick to call it a lie? Y'all are attacking him every day saying he's lying every day.
[Dale:] Well, he often does lie every day.
[Walsh:] He is lying every day.
[Dale:] I think I think it's clear that he is a serial liar. That doesn't mean that each and every instance of his say him say something false is a deliberate lie.
[Stelter:] I was struck by something Don Lemon said on scene another night. He said, this is an extreme crisis and I liked the framing of that because we sometimes lose sight of how it's an ongoing problem to your point earlier, Daniel, we can't let this fade away from the headlines. Joan, last thoughts to you?
[Walsh:] You know, our parents raised us to say be honest and if you lie, people will then never trust you again. So, Donald Trump has lost the presumption of truth and, you know, I rarely give him the benefit of the doubt if it looks like he's lying because he has been lying his whole career, he's been lying his whole presidency I don't think he you know, without evidence, he doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt. This is a conscious, conscious tactic that he uses. It's a tactic that authoritarians have used from time immemorial to confuse us all, have us fighting amongst ourselves about
[Stelter:] Confuse, I like that word confuse.
[Walsh:] what the truth is. Lose sight of the truth loses meaning and we're fighting were fighting about tangents. But I'm with I'm with Daniel. Bring this story of the lying, the overall pattern of lying. That is a story in itself. It should be part of our beat.
[Stelter:] Joan, good to see you. Thanks for being here.
[Walsh:] You too.
[Stelter:] Daniel, great to have you on the program as well.
[Dale:] Thanks.
[Stelter:] Thanks for being here. Up next, why are top government officials like EPA boss Scott Pruitt trying to work in the shadows? A congressman and a reporter are here to tell you how they're trying to shine some light to it.