CNN National Security Analyst Samantha Vinograd claimed Tuesday that President Barack Obama separated migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border “for their protection” during a panel discussion in which pundits attacked President Donald Trump’s border policies.
A partial transcript is as follows:
WOLF BLITZER: The President, in the Oval Office with the Egyptian President, he denied CNN’s reporting and other reporting that he is thinking of reinstating zero-tolerance family separation policy. He repeated this accusation against President Obama. […] [Trump] stopped it after he authorized the zero-tolerance policy. That was announced by John Kelly here in The Situation Room only six or eight weeks after he was inaugurated and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, at the time, he implemented that policy. The policy no longer exists right now, but that was a new strategy, a new policy that they had implemented to deter illegal immigration.
[…]
SAMANTHA VINOGRAD: President Obama, when he separated children from their families, Wolf, it was for their protection. It was as if there was a risk of trafficking or other kind of harm that might have been incurred. But even if he did do that, why is Donald Trump saying that two wrongs make a right? Again, Obama wasn’t right, but he’s saying that because something is happening under President Obama, he’s repeating it and upping the ante. That’s an incredibly poor excuse. He’s systemized that inhumane treatment that, again, Obama was doing to protect children.