Fox News' Shep Smith and CNN's Anderson Cooper muster facts against Trump's immigration 'gaslighting'

President Trump is "patting himself on the back for taking action regarding a situation he himself created" on the border, and the White House is "still not owning up to it — the gaslighting continues," Anderson Cooper said on CNN Monday night. And on top of separating families, he added, Trump now "seems to want to take away due process for undocumented immigrants entirely."

"The White House can blame past administrations or blame Congress, but that doesn't change the fact that it was this administration's 'zero tolerance' policy that led to the separation of thousands of children from their parents," Cooper said. Trump didn't create the current laws, but "it was this administration's choice to enforce them in a way no other president has. Now caught in the middle of this confusion, chaos, of course, are real people, real children, and the major question is what happens to them now?"

On Fox News Monday, anchor Shepard Smith, returning from 10 days of vacation, said that "seeing the pictures of these children in cages, and knowing that we can't see all of the realities inside these facilities, you know, you wonder, is there a rule anywhere that what the government is doing of, by, and for the people should be transparent and seeable by the people?" He was asking University of Memphis law professor Steven Mulroy, who wasn't sure but said migrant parents unable to regularly communicate with their separated kids probably have standing to sue Trump, as would any parent deported without due process.

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"Just a matter of fact here," Smith said, "the United States government is at this moment holding young children — as young as infants, we're told by the government — alone, separate from their parents, in conditions about which we have no information, in places to which we have no access, and from which no pictures have been shown to the public. That's the fact." Watch below. Peter Weber