Twist and make it about him and an agenda when it was supposed to be about the kids. You cant leave it alone. You have to do it in context. Im sure youll do a perfect job. Heres the thing though. She asked the question, do you . So the question deserves an answer. Absolutely. Dont be surprised when people are talking about it. Nice when questions get answers. Its a nice change. Thank you. Breaking news. More chaos on the border. Emailed obtained by cnn suggest president trumps zero tolerance policy may be effectively on hold despite what the Administration Says publically. That as the president himself admitted today families could still be separated. I signed a good executive order yesterday, but thats only limited, no matter how you cut it. It leads to separation ultimately. With no clear plan to reunite families that have already been split up, this is a crisis entirely of the president s own making. Thousands of children still paying the price for his policy. A policy that is simply heartless. More than 2,300 migrant kids forcibly removed from their parents. Many sent thousands of miles away with no way to contact their parents. The department of Health Human Services waiting for guidance on how to return these children to their parents and what to do next. In the midst of all this chaos, Melania Trump we talked about it made a surprise trip to the border today visiting Migrant Children in a shelter which frankly is more than the president has done. But the trip overshadowed by her 39 zara jacket with the phrase i really dont care. Do u . There it is printed on the back. It was some sort of message to someone. Really a dig at the news media as the president claims . A republican close to the white house tells cnn thats nothing but revisionist history. Well have more on that coming up. Make no mistake. It is no accident this president is taking a hard line on immigration. Branding immigrants as criminals, using incendiary language like his claim that the country is being infested. After all, this is a president who on day one launched his campaign by calling mexican immigrants rapists and who less than a year ago said there were, quote, very fine people on both sides of the white supremacist violence in charlottesville. Now those same White Supremacists are planning a rally across the street from the white house. Will it be charlottesville 2. 0 . Well get to that in a moment. I want to begin now with senior political commentator David Axelrod and nicholas christoph. I read the stats of the thousands of kids in detention. The president is adding to the confusion saying the executive orders are limited and separations may continue. For what we have heard, they are effectively not imposing their policy. Is this president do you think hes taking the issue of reuniting the kids seriously, with their parents . Well, i think whats happened is he acted out of a political impulse and instinct. He saw political gain and as Cory Lewandowski said they saw this as an issue, used it and created a human rights crisis on the border. Now what we see is just massive monumental incompetence. When you have a president who is improvisational, impulsive and doesnt care about process, planning or principle then you get what we see today. I think they dont know what to do. I think they are scrambling. I think they are telling us the program is continuing in part because he insists on saying that. But i honestly have never seen such rank incompetence. This is what happens when you have a president who just doesnt give a damn. Do you care . Yeah. We care. Right . Especially about those kids. Can you imagine this, nick . We are being told one lawmaker told us these kids may never be put back together, reunited with their families. Can you imagine that . My sense is that most will be reunited at some point. But it is unconscionable they have been taken away as long as they have and there are cases where putting them back together will be difficult and perhaps impossible. In some cases the parents have already been deported and the child is in a different bureaucracy and a different state in the u. S. In the case of an infant its going to be difficult to match them up. If somebody goes in a jail with coins in their pocket they get a receipt for their coins. Their child was taken away and there doesnt seem to be a process to get the child back. I will play this. Jeff sessions was on the Christian Broadcasting Network today. Hes now saying he never intended to separate families. Thats not what he said last month. Here he is now and then. It hasnt been good. The American People dont like the idea that we are separating families. We never really intended to do that. If youre smuggling a child then we are going to prosecute you. And that child will be separated from you probably as required by law. So he said they were going to use it as a deterrent. Now hes saying no. Right back from the beginning of the Administration John Kelly when he was at the Homeland Security director said this was going to be a deterrent. Thats completely what they have said. Again, you know, there is this complete scrambling now. One thing is its easy what we have seen is shocking. We are asking ourselves who we are as a country. Let me just say a word for our country. The one thing that made donald trump back down was a fundamental sense of decency in this country. A fundamental rejection of this horrific, horrific policy and, you know, that actually makes me proud to be an american. Now weve got to find these kids and hold the government accountable for reuniting these families. In an age people said nothing seems to matter. Nothing seems to penetrate. This did have to go a long way in order to get there. The outrage. Children. Listening to their voices, hearing the stories. It took a long time to get to this moment where they have to retract. They have been separating kids from parents since fall. Then it became routine in april. Their coverup, not giving access to these places, for example. I think that really helped. What has struck me is not only the brutality of this policy of separating even infants, but the mendacity with which it was rolled out and the apologists for this. You know, the whole notion that the wompwomp. We are going to talk about that in a moment. Apologetics for policy like this should leave people ashamed. I have had some folks on defending it in the beginning. I wasnt trying to a gsay gotch. I wonder what it is like to be constantly under mined by the person you are defending. You feel you have to. Do you understand what im saying . Hes basically contradicted or made into a lie what everyone has said who has defended this policy. Yeah. But isnt that sort of the politics of donald trump . He demands that fidelity. Look at the whole mark sanford incident. If you have the temerity to speak out and you are in the Republican Party hes going to crush you. So what you have seen is a great deal of cowardice until cowardice couldnt hold. You mentioned the wompwomp moment by corey lewandowski. Watch this. This is fox news. I read today about a 10yearold girl with down syndrome who was taken from her mother and put in a cage. Wompwomp. Did you say wompwomp to a 10yearold with down syndrome what i said how dare you . How absolutely dare you, sir . Well, he was on with my colleague chris cuomo to explain himself. Here it is. Chris, of course i never meant to insult anybody with down syndrome and who i was talking to was zach. I understand what the perception is here and what the media wants to talk about. But what zach was attempting to do was to use a child with down syndrome to politicize an issue. What do you think . This is just absurd. The dismissiveness about the problem just underscores, it seems to me, a lack of empathy with which this program was introduced all along. It is not just corey leju lewandowski. John kelly said they would be looked after. There is a lack of empathy for the children that reflects the demonization directed toward migrants and has underpinned this policy toward immigration. Everything flows from the guy at the top. Every president set it is tone for people who work and speak for him. You have a president who has publically mocked people with disabilities. Let me put this up. This goes to what you were saying. These are tweets the president sent out today, many in the last few hours griping about democrats and immigration, melanias jacket and so on. Hes venting. But not leading. And this is the explanation. They pushed the immigration vote to next week. But go on. You were nations capitali inma empathy is not a valued quality in the trump operation. This president doesnt show empat empathy. He manufactures empathy for the alleged there are some victims of crimes by immigrants, but hes created this mythology and demonized immigrants, many of whom come here to flee gangs and to flee crime and risk their own lives because of the conditions that they have to put up with. Wheres the empathy for them . Yeah. You sat down with senator marco rubio. Here is what he said about people crossing the border. Watch this. Yes, there are people who cross the border who are dangerous and criminals and the like. I would say through my experience the vast majority of people are coming over because they just want a better life. My sense of it is if youre a father, for example my situation, my family is desperate, living in a dangerous situation, i would do almost anything to protect my children and find a better life for them. We have to understand that. That doesnt mean we dont have to have laws on our end. Mexico has immigration laws and canada has immigration laws. I dont think we should generalize that. I think the vast majority of people crossing the border want Something Better. Hes describing people crossing the border differently than the president is. Marco rubio was very careful in that interview. He was trying to navigate this. He is a son of immigrants. He understands the story. He understands the yearning for Something Better for your children. So thats where he got off the train. I think hes also wrong on the facts. Most of the people coming are from Central America fleeing honduras, guatemala, el salvador and brutal gang violence. One of the people i spoke to was a girl called elena who had been made to be the girlfriend of a gang leader at age 11. Another girl who had been asked to be the gang leader was gang raped and shot in the stomach and died. Elenas mother was trying to rescue her and the family by taking her north. It wasnt just an issue of a better life. Any parent would want to do that to help their child. And then for us to respond in this way with this demonization, dehumanzation, to blame the parents and say what are you doing coming here and then for the u. S. To be paying 775 a night per child to house them when we dont have resources for other things but we are willing to rip up families and pay that much money. This lack of humanity at every step of the way. We always say is this Hurricane Katrina. Is this whoevers katrina moment. How does this stack up . Is it becoming that . Because the images are awful. Remember, it was the images in fairness to president bush they mishandled Hurricane Katrina and there may have been reasons for the overlooking of people there that had darker impulses or people being neglected. He didnt create the crisis. This has been manufactured by this administration. I think that is what makes it even more heinous. Its a manufactured he crisis of his own creation. Hurricane katrina exemplified in competen incompetence. This exemplifies inhumanity. This is a striking Time Magazine cover. It is a photo of a sobbing toddler photoshopped in with the president staring down. What do you think of that . Well, i think the story one of the things thats happened here and one of the things that galvanized us are images, not words. That child was taken from that unbelievably moving photo from the border. I think she was a honduran child. But that says everything right there. We all identify with children. We all care about children. We have children. We see our own children in that childs face. Try to imagine what it would be like. I think the photos have been absolutely devastating. When we put a human face like that on the problem, thats when we can begin to have empathy. It is harder to dehumanize and it seems it is about bigotry or racism. If this was canadians does anybody think we would be tearing apart families . We do have people coming across. Of course. That narrative didnt serve the president. This is a guy that came down the escalator and launched his campaign with slanders. Let me ask you this. Do you think most americans are knowledgeable of the situation on the border . I would hate to characterize it as a crisis. Im not characterizing it at all. Do you think they are knowledgeable about what it is . Is it fair to call it a crisis . I think there would be great polarity if you polled on it as to how people accounted for whats going on. The fact is there is not a crisis on the border right now. There are people coming over illegally. It has to be dealt with. It has to be dealt with appropriately. There are people seeking asylum and they should be dealt with appropriately. But there is this is an issue that has been used to divide and polarize this country. I suspect even as we sit here today if you polled on it that you would find supporters of the president have one view and other people would have another view. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Dont miss the axe files saturday night at 7 00 eastern with marco rubio. When we come back, the medical and emotional toll of family separation. Dr. Sanjay gupta is here to talk about lifelong effects on children taken from their parents. You have heard the pleas of the children like a 6yearold separated from her mother at the border begging for authorities to call her aunt. Now cnn has spoken to the girls mother. [ speaking in a Foreign Language ] cnn tonight brought to you by wells far go. Weekend of wonder. Tune in noon to 4 00 eastern on hln. Hes made us better because his want to. He gets us out there more. Theres days that im pretty tired after work. I would like to maybe just relax one day. Then i know i mean hes 10. Hell only be home eight more years. I better spent every second i can with him. Ride to position. Okay . Watch the feet when you leave here. Being a cowboy is a must. Its not a maybe or a what if. Its a must. Its the best feeling ever to watch him do something he hasnt been able to do before. When you see him do what you told him to do its like, thank you jesus, you got this. For this story and more tune in to hln for weekend of wonder with limited commercial interruptions. Until. We lost it. Today, were renewing our commitment to you. Fixing what went wrong. And ending Product Sales goals for branch bankers. So we can focus on your satisfaction. Its a new day at wells fargo. But its a lot like our first day. Wells fargo. Established 1852. Reestablished 2018. The president s executive order on family separation has so far done nothing to fix the mess me made at the border and the results are spreading thousands of miles away. 2,300 children have been taken from their parents and are being held across the country. Doctors are speaking out. The American Academy of pediatrics saying separating children from their parents contradicts everything we stand for as pediatricians. Going on to say it causes irreparable harm to children. Lets bring in dr. Sanjay gupta to explain what the impact can be here. Longterm effects . Welcome, by the way. This is awful. Its just awful. You cant help but think about your own kids when you hear the stories and what it must be like for the kids and the parents as well. Shortterm and longterm effects. Worse for the younger kids. This is a toxic sort of stress. I know you have talked about this before. What that means in this context is they have had a lot of stress already getting to the border. They had a lot of stress at the border. You take away the one thing that can buffer the stress the guardian, parent. That can buffer stress. Buffering stress so important for children. They dont have it. So this turns into a toxic stress which within days can lead to some significant effects. Longterm if you look at Mental Illness in adults, 40 of Mental Illness in adults is directly related to some of the toxic childhood events. Absolutely. We know what some of the impacts are longterm. I want to play something for you. We have heard the plays of the 6yearold girl separated from her mother after they crossed over the border. Listen. This is a heartbreaking audio one more time. This gets you every single time. This may have been the catalyst for the president changing signing the executive order. My gosh. You feel it, dont you . You cant help but feel that. All this toxic stress im talking about, thats the manifestation of it. Yeah. That makes your chest just tighten up. I want to know what happened to this little girl now. Yeah. Rosa flores spoke to her mother today. Heres what she said about trying to get in touch with her daughter. Can you imagine the trauma as a parent . Total loss of control. Total uncertainty when it comes to someone that you value more than any other in your life. Its a huge Emotional Trauma. We talk about the kids. Kids are more vulnerable. Their brains are still developing. Longterm effects. Psychological. For the parents as well. Loss of control and uncertainty when it comes to someone that is your dependent are some of the biggest stressors we can go through. Other that happen n actually lo someone. Some call it child abuse. Is it . I saw that as well. I think it is child abuse. I looked it up to see what the hhs definition of child abuse is. Its not going to surprise anybody. You can take a look at the definition there. Its that Emotional Trauma thats there in the third line. Without a doubt. Thats happening here. Emotional trauma. Someone who has acted to cause it or didnt act to prevent it. Thats child abuse. By their own definition, don. Its awful. Its unbelievable. Im so glad you are here to walk us through it. Thank you, doctor. I wish i could see you under better circumstances. Me, too. When we come back, i really dont care. Do u . Thats the message from the first lady on her way to visit a childrens shelter at the border. Wh