welcome to "inside politics." i'm dana bash. john king has the day off today. we have a lot of political stories to bring you this hour like president trump pushing hard against the russia probe minutes ago, calling fir fbi director james comey mueller's best friend and the supreme court is now sidestepping two major cases of partisan

gerrymandering. we start with the trump administration with the practice of separating children from their families when they try to cross the border. a practice who has been called heartless and cruel from eak out.ans who almost never but this mory're doubling down on bipartisan outrage. >> we d not have the luxury of pretending that all individuals coming to this country as a family unit are, in fact, a family. we have to do our job. we will not apologize for doing our job. we have sworn to do this job. this administration has a simple message. if you cross the border illegally, we will prosecute you. >> on the nation's southern border, what the trump administration means when it says zero tolerance on illegal immigration but what amounts to government-sanctioned child abuse. that's according to the head of

the american academy of pediatrics right here on cnn last hour. the department of homeland security confirms that the government forcibly separated some 2,000 children from their parents or guardians between mid-april and the end of may. now, this is a result of a new crackdown by the trump administration to automatically prosecute adults caught illegally crossing the border and take away any children who are in their care. the simmering outrage of this policy has boiled over thanks to lawmakers and some journalists getting access to visit facilities you see there that house these separated families. they were not allowed to take photos or record video, but the government has released these images that you're seeing. cages, chain link fences, silvery thermal blankets and mattresses on the floor. cnn's rosa flores is at the border in san diego, california. rosa, i just want to put back up some of those images, because

the homeland security secretary said again this morning that these minors are being taken care of. these facilities, again, like the one we're seeing here, they have children taking care of hem that don't even know. they h change their diapers because nobody is around to do that. that is a very different picture that we're seeing and hearing from people who have witnessed that from what we heard from government officials this morning. >> reporter: yes, dana, and lawmakers using those images and those stories to try to push the trump administration to stop separating families. now, wii see've seen lawmakers to detention centers in texas and new jersey, and now we're going to see it here in southern california. we've learned that minority leader nancy pelosi and members of the congressional hispanic caucus will be going to various locations here in southern california, but they're being

tight-lipped about the detention centers that they will be visiting. we do know of two detention centers in the area, one that houses children, about 65 of them, and another one that houses adults. so it's unclear where they will be going. but the trump administration still digging in their heels, blaming the democrats. this weekend dhs secretary nielsen tweeting in part, quote, we do not have a policy of separating families at the border, period, dana. but as you mentioned, dhs itself saying between april and may they separated 2,000 children. i want to leave you with this editorial note because it's not just families crossing the border who were separated. there was a family who was seeking asylum, a mother who turned herself in to authorities and was later separated from her children.

this mother is in texas, and dana, her children ages 2, 6 and 13 are in new york. dana? >> oh, my goodness rosa, thank you so much bringing us that. it's so important that we're now able to get that kind of information and shine a light on this. we mentioned that we have heard from members of the trump administration this morning pushing back, insisting that it's actually congress that has to fix the situation. listen here to attorney general jeff sessions and the secretary of homeland security kirsten niels nielsen. >> we asked congress to change the law to allow for the expeditious return of unaccompanied alien children regardless of their country of origin. we're also asking congress to allow us to keep families together while they are detained. >> president trump has said this lawlessness cannot continue. we do not to separate parents from their children. you can be sure of that. if we build a wall, we pass some legislation, we close some

loopholes, we won't face these terrible choices. >> here with me to share their reporting and their insights, michael scherer with the "new yorkimes," sun wu kim with the "washington post," andcnn paul copeland. let'srt with an important fact check here. it is not congress that has to change the law. changing the law across the board on immigration is necessary and certainly would be helpful, but this is an administration policy. at the end of the day, at the beginning of the day, and everywhere in between, they made this decision. it just boggles the mind that you hear people like kirjsten nielsen who you would imagine knows better, but maybe she has has to deal with, which is an audience of one, the president >> look, part of the problem from a political perspective that's besetting this administration is they can't

figure out what to say. the president has sort of directed the administration to blame democrats. so down the line what you see is the administration trying to follow through with that, even as they're confronted with the actual facts, which is to say that the laws they talk about changing have been in place for a long time. what has changed is a decision by the administration to implement what jeff sessions admits is a zero tolerance policy on the people that are crossing the border illegally with families or without. previous administrations have not done that. previous administrations have decided to make exemptions for families if somebody comes over with a small child, they didn't prosecute in the same way. that has consequences and the country has to figure how to deal with all of that. but this administration is struggling because they're not owning up to what they did. >> you're right, and we're going to get to the very mixed messages, that's an understatement, from the administration. let's for a second focus on what

we heard from rosa, what we showed at the beginning of the show, the reality of ts humanitarian crisis when you're talking about children. several of us have children. we know what it means to have a two-year-old separated from -- maybe it's not their mother or father, but the person they've known as a caregiver. and nobody to do anything as much as change a diaper, but apparently the policy is not to hug them or give them physical care and comfort in these facilities. on that note, colleen craft, the president of the american academy of pediatrics, was on with kate bolduan this hour. here's what she said. she went down there. she saw it. >> this does amount to child abuse. these children have been traumatized this their trip up to the border, and the first thing that happens is we take away the one constant in their life that helps them buffer all of these horrible experiences. that's child abuse. >> and, of course, we've all

probably seen laura bush who never spoke out -- almost never spoke out about political issues when she was in office, much less since she's been out of office. and among the things that she wrote in an op-ed in the "washington post" is "the people wo at the shelter have been instructed, as i mentioned, not to pick up or comfort them. imagine not being able to pick up a child who is not yet out of diapers. really? this is america. >> i can't imagine just the pain that is happening, especially with these children. which is why you've seen not only a backlash from medical professionals and whatnot but also from the evangelical reallynt here, who are such a major part of -- >> can you holdhat thought? i want to actually show what franklin graham, one of those evangelical leaders, who was an early supporter of donald trump, much to the chagrin of a lot of republicans who didn'tnd why, b still is, and here's what he

said. "i think it's disgraceful. terribl to see fam ripped apart and i don't support that one bit. i blame the poliansorhe last 20 or 30 years who has allowed this to escalate to the point where it is today." >> it's unclear how much those voices will change the president's mind. i talked to a lot of religious leaders last friday, and they werespecia irred and frustrated about how the attorney general and sarah sanders had used the bible to justify their policy, saying it's biblical to enforce the law. they're saying t so many other examps in the bible that say we take care of these children, these children are innocent. how much of a b thatamounts to changing his mind, i thinkt's to to see, but that's a development we'll definitely have to watch for. >> the mixed messages are very clear. we just made a little sort of visual map, a visual guide for our viewers to try to figure it out. there are those that are deflecting blame in and around the trump orbit,y the

administration, steve bannon, jeff sessions and others, deny that it's a policy. the homeland security secretary again, which is sort of stunning. people criticizinglit. melania trump, although she can't have it both ways, she's criticizing it. and the president of the united states who is seeing it and saying, uh-oh, maybe this isn't exactly what i wanted when i said bgh on the border on immigration. >> in march homeland security secretary john kelly pre viewed this policy and specifically described it as an effort to deter immigration to t united states. so they can't really have it bothays they can't brag about it as a potential deterrent, and then secretary nielsen's comments have evolved inhe last 24 hours. yesterday it wasn't a policy, today it's a policy for which she'ot going to apologize.

>> you mentioned it is a deterrent. the homeland security secretary was asked that question while testifying before congress in may. let's watch that. >> have you been directed to separate from children as a method of deterrence of undocumentedmigration? >> i have not been directed to do that for purposes of deterrence, no. >> okay. other administration officials have said it is a policy of deterrence. and you have some new information about how, policy or not, clearly this was done -- zero tolerance, they say that over and over again -- to try to stop more illegal immigration happenin across the southern border and it's not working. sodana, we've actually obtained some internalocuments from the department of homeland security that actually spell out exactly how they expected this policy to have an effect on migrant flows at the border and that we did

not see those materialize. so in those internal documents, you see in early april when the first sort of steps of this wer place, they predicted that the full impact of policy initiatives are not fully realized for two three weeks following public messaging. and then, as the weeks go on and you see the exact opposite effect of anything you would predict this policy of having an impact on, so the number of people crossing illegally go up every week. the number of people turning themselves in ports of entry legally go down every week. they say cvp continues t assess the turn effect of the prosecution initiative, as they're calli it,t fly realized and apprehensions may decline for end of month, but then we see they ille crossings went up 5% and legal crossings fell 9%. as we're talking about this

mixed messaging, the spokesperson for dhs, katey a alderman said, of course we expect this to have a deterrent effect, but they expected it would have an impact and they saw the opposite thing. when you talk about the trauma, when you talk about the human impact and how troubling this policy is for so many across the board, the one thing dhs and the administration says is, we need this because this going to help usure the border. and the important thing these documents show is it completely cuts conduct. >> president trump's own administration's document numbers say it's not working. as we go to break, and we'll

talk more on the other end, there is a place f arguingthat immigration. families or not families. but the idea of actively separating them, that's what's getting everybody so outraged and you can tell i'm on that page. up next, don't go away. we're going to talk about president trump's tweets on this issue, immigration, making his position pretty clear, right? well, maybe not so much. why some republican lawmakers are so confused about where he stands. $1.50 futures contracts? what about a dedicated service team of trading specialists? did you say yes? good, then it's time for power e*trade. the platform, price and service that gives you the need. looks like we have a couple seconds left. let's do some card twirling twirling cards e*trade. the original place to invest online.

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we can't allow that to happen to the united states. not on my watch. for the rest of the world, you look at everything that's taken place, pick up your newspapers this morning and you see. we want safety and we want security for our country. if the democrats would sit down instead of obstructing, we could have something done very quickly. good for the children, good for the country, good for the world. it could take place quickly. we could have an immigration bill, we could have child separation, we're stuck with ey horrible laws.ws. what's happening is so sad, is so sad. and it can be taken care of quickly, beautifully, and we'll ve safety. this could really be something very special. it could be something maybe even

for the world to watch, just like they're watching our great economy, how it's soaring. they could watch this. we have the worst immigration laws in the entire world. dy has such sa such bad -- and actually, in many cases, such horrible and tough, you see, about child separation. you see what's going on there. but just remember, a country without borderss not a country at all. we need borders, we need security, we need safety. we have to take care of our people. you take a look at the death and destruction that's been caused by people coming into this country without going through a process. we want a merit-based immigration system so that boeing and lockheed and all of the people, grummen, all the

people here today, the heads of every company, so that you can hire people on a merit base. you know they' coming in. they're people who came on merit, not based on a lottery or not people that snuck across the border. they could be murderers and thieves and so much else. so we want a safe country. and it starts with the borders. and that's the way it is. now i'd like to -- [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you. again, we can do this very quickly if the democrats come together. everybody wants to do it. we want to do it more than they do. if they come to the table instead of playing politics, we can do it very, very quickly. so welcome to the third meeting of the national space council. >> we were just listening to president trump speak quite forcefully about immigration,

the need to change the laws as we've heard him say so many that a candidate, but bef specifically talking about the fact the democrats need to come to the table. he's talking about that for several reasons we'll get to, but first and foremost there is legislation that is likely to come to the house floor, a pair of bills, rather, and the question is whether any of that will see the light of day, whether any of that will get the votes, and that largely depends i want to bring in our phil mattingly who knows all about the ins and outs of these two bills, both authored by and being pushed by republicans to dealh immigration, to deal with border security and the president has talked about, he maybe not so much depending on which legislation we're talking about, the issue we've been talking about all morning which is child separation. fill us in, phil.

>> reporter: dana, i think you need to look at what the house is considering this week as a method to solve the daca issue, not the separation issue. there is one considered conservative, one moderate republicans have been behind closed doors and negotiating with leadership for the last couple weeks. here's the reality, specifically when you jump off what the president just said. this is a partisan effort. this is an effort that doesn't have a companion piece of work that's moving over in the senate. dana, you recall quite well the senate tried their hand at immigration a couple months ago. no proposal, including the president's own proposal, got enough democrats to pass. can the house do anything on a partisan basis to move something forward on the daca issue? tomorrow night the president will be on capitol hill at 5:30. he'll be participating in a closed door briefing of the entire capitol hill conference. why does that matter? because nothing will move through the house floor without

the president's support. you heard the president talk about needing to move on immigration legislation. here's the rub on that. on fy everything started to fall apart on the moderate bill that had been negotiated when the president said publicly he didn't support it. then we had a back and forth for hours. we thought there would be a clarifying tweet. we thought there would be a clarifying statement. then there was breitbart who said the white house was opposed to the bill. then the white house gave a statement saying they supported the bill. why all of this matters right now? what i'm told by republican aides is this legislation is th chance of a vote in the house. the president is basically going to have to deliver a strong speech in support of that bill, a bill that a lot of hard line conservatives, hard line advocates are deeply, deeply opposed to. that's just the first step of a multi-step process that at this point doesn't have a senate companion. real quick, i just want to note, you talk about the child separation policy. it is addressed in one of the bills and likely will be addressed in both of the bills

once it gets there, but it doesn't stop what the administration has chosen to do as far as prosecutorial discretion, in criminal cases when someone comes over the border illegally. what it does is change the law of 20 years of how children treated in these types of situations. basically it would allow those children to be detained indefinitely with those families as opposed to separating them. when you talk to advocates who are very keen on this issue, they say it doesn't go near far enough. other republicans agre right now republicans are just trying to get the bill to pass at a bare minimum on immigration this week, dana. >> and you said allows the administration to change policy. that's an important point when we're talking about the child separation because, again, despite what the president said, this is an administration policy to pursue separating the children from their families, it is not something that congress put into place specifically as part of the law that they have

to move on at the ministration. phil,hank you so muchthat. back around the table, just taking it up maybe to 5,000 fe also want to introduce katherine lucie from the associated press who is joining our panel. this question about whether congress is going to act, the house in particular, house republicans even more specifically are going to act on immigrationhis week, the fact that we have these competing republican bills and they don't know where the president stands. it seems to me that if the president puts his weight behind anything, it will bed what they're calling the compromises bill which has the backing of the house leadership. if for no other reason, that specifically says there will be $25 billion for his border security wall. the other just authorizes it. this actually gives $25 million. do you think he's going to say, okay, i want this one, and will that helpet the votes?

>> we'll see what happens. let's make it clear there is no law that forces family separation. this is an administration policy. and it will depend on how the president decides to sell one at legislation at the meeting tomorrow night, and w what we saw last friday doesn't help matters. we saw immediate repercussions of that on capitol hill. you have moder who do want some sort of piece of legislation passed saying, he may have misspoken, we think the president supports our bill, we will see some sort of walk-back shortly. then you had the hardliners who are very uneasy about this compromise thing. the president knows what he's talking about. there are concerns raised with i'm very interested in seeing how he goes about selling this bill. and the reason why this was all the more confounding what he said in the fox & friends interview week w the so-called compromise bill, and it's also a compromise within the republican congress, it's not a compromise within

democrats here, is that it has all these four pillars of immigration reform that his administration has touted for months, and yet you saw the word moderate. it made me think it wasn't the kind of bill you wanted. >> or maybe he was watching lou dobbs on fox. list ton when to what he and ot conservatives are calling the compromise bill on immigration. >> if ryan and his rhinos have broken the president's promise to build the wall, if ryan and his rhinos have their way on open borders and continued chain migration at any level, any form of lottery visas and further deceives both the president and his voters, ryan will have betrayed the president and the party and most certainly will have destroyed the republican chance of holding their majority in the house. >> remember when the senate actually voted on this stuff, the president's preferred bill got the fewest number of votes?

i remember also cnn's own phil mattingly put it more colorfully. he said, if there was some unicorn legislatiwould get the president's signature, we would already have it. none of this bodes well for congress and the house. >> we've seen this many times over the years of covering legislative battles, that if and when they have these votes, they're show votes. they're votes so that the moderates can go back to their constituents and say, look, i voted on something that will help the dreamers or their constituencies and the same goes for the conservatives. this is to take a vote, not to actually introduce legislation at will get into law. >> underscoring all of this, it's a midterm election year and lawmakers have to go back to their constituents and talk about all this, and the president is very conscious about his base. we see that with his remarks just now. we see it with the doubling down

on tough immigration rhetoric. it will be interesting to see where he takes this tomorrow, but he really believes that a key reason he was elected, a key issue for his supporters is this tough immigration rhetoric. >> absolutely, and that's why you guys have done reporting, we've done reporting for a year and a half now about the fact that when he meets with his cabinet officials, particularly those who have jurisdiction over immigration homeland security, he gets very exercised about the fact this particular promise wasn't kept, which kind of, i think, probably led to this child separation policy as these cabinet officials going overboard to try to please the president. maybe too overboard. >> there's deep division between this white house and the republican party between people who maybe want more immigration and people who want a more moderate approach to dreamers and to others because of the changing demographics of

districts and their states. those two battles, both of which, again, are within the republican party and within the white house to say nothing of the democrats, that's playing out here and it's difficult. >> and democrats do have a role. we'll talk about that later in the show because it's important. i'm glad you pointed that out. next, the supreme court decides not to decide two major cases with huge political consequences. we'll talk about that next. duncan just protected his family

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the supreme court sidestepped two major gerrymandering cases today leaving two maps in place for the time being. in one case they challenged districts drawn by republicans. in the other, maryland challenged districts drawn up by democrats. today's ruling comes with just one week and 14 cases left on the docket. i want to go right now to cnn's jessica schneider joining us

live from outside the supreme court. so jessica, what message in reading these opinions do they send on the question and gerrym? >> people wanted a broader issue here, but they wanted these maps drawn with intentional legal purposes. the supreme court not measuring on the issue, really relying on procedural grounds to let these maps stand, at least for now. they may be in place if other court rulings happen. the supreme court, interestingly, they didn't rule on this broader constitutional issue as to whether or not partisan gerrymandering is constitutional. they left that question open. but this was a unanimous decision to let these maps stand. however, at least one justice really signalled here that this issue could once again come before the supreme court if the facts of the case are right, and

that was justice alena kagan. she put it this way. she said partisan gerrymandering no doubt burdens individual votes, but it also causes other harmz. it will again be called on to redress extreme partisan gerrymanders. i am hopeful that we will then step up to our responsibility to vindicate the constitution against a contrary law. of course, dana, just a few months before the midterms, this has become a real flash point on the political spectrum. president obama hasade this a case that he wants to fight. he's already pledged to have more equality in these legislative districts after the 2020 census, and we know president trump has tweeted o h often about it as well saying, let's bring it to the supreme court. today they did and the supreme

court sidestepping the issue, dodging it, leaving the bigger question for another day. dana? >> jessica, thank you so much, and they certainly did dodge. you can use maybe more colorful language about what the supreme court didn't do today. look, this is an important political question. i think maybe one of the most important political questions that we've seen over the past few decades. because we see it every day. and voters and americans see it every day when they say, why isn't congress getting anything done? if you look at the house of representatives, a big reason is the gerrymandering that's gone on. this is the way each state draws their congressional districts and draws them to protect either democrats or republicans, and what that means is that when republican x or democrat y is le legislating,y are more concerned about a challenge from the right if they're republican, because it's a republican district, or a challenge from the left if they're a democrat, and that means the incentive is

to move to the extremes instead of to the middle. and the supreme court has the ability to do what congress and state legislatures clearly can't do, which is police themselves to make sure it doesn't happen. >> right, but this is, at the end of the day, a tug-of-war between who should fix that problem, right? you stated the problem quite eloquently. i think there is a fair amount of recognition on both sides that that is the problem, but the question is who should fix that? and the supreme court, you know, when the arguments were held, there was a lot of skepticism by the justices saying back to the cases, why is that our problem? this is, at the end of the day, a political situation that the two parties in the state legislatures should be able to resolve. they should be able to fix this. the argument back to the supreme court justices basically is, it's more frozen. the american political system cannot fix this and what's happening is partisans are taking control of the, you know,

seg setting up these boundaries, and we need you, the supreme court, to step in and stop this. >> one could argue that is why there are three branches of government, for one to step in and to fix another, but they can't do it. >> but the supreme court is always wary of stepping in. >> as jessica reported, maybe it will happen, just not with these cases. >> we always talk about "we." >> the royal we. >> we talk about midterms chiefly in control of the house and congress. one of the more important dynamics is the government shift and the state legislatures because they're often the ones called upon to fix it or make it work, right? in terms of that fight, one of the most important dynamics in politics today is under the obama presidency, drats got routed. they lost governorships, they lost state houses. they're paying a really stiff price for that now and you hear

it in the government house on the trial, both in terms of legislator oppression, and some big laws on that as well. >> we have to go to break but we'll catch more on this in a minute. up next, we have one of the midterm candidates -- we've been talking about the midterms. one of them is debuting his first campaign ad and it's a total dumpster fire. benjamin franklin

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neighborhoods and reducing crime. the safe neighborhoods grant act makes neighborhoods safer and updates political issues. satisfaction with direction of u.s. reaches a 12-year high. it's up nine points since last month and marks the highest satisfaction rate since 2005. that number historically helps predict which party performs better in the elections. and minnesota senate candidate richard painter is releasing his first campaign ad. painter, who served as the white house ethics leader under george w. bush, is running as a democrat and says someone needs to put out a fire raging in washington. >> some people see a dumpster fire and do nothing but watch thespectacle. some are too scared to face the danger.

there is an inferno outraging in washington. but here in the town of 10,000 likes, we know how to put out a fire. >> that's definitely the most subtle ad we've seen. painter has emerged as an out spoken critic, as you might have surmised. the critic of the president is hoping to unseat tina smith after she resigned following allegations of misconduct. up next, a new threat in the fight between republican lawmakers and the trump justice department. stay with us. we do whatever it taketo fight cancer.

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welcome back. today the president who is long called the special counsel's investigational witch hunt is making a new charge. he said the following: comey gave stj jrkstrozk his marching.

mueller is comey's best friend. witch hunt! the president is connecting dots that aren't there. the justice department watchdog could not prove that politics drove investigative decisions in the clinton e-mail probe. the inspector general did, however, find an apparent bias against officials like this message about strzok that he was referring to. the strzok text have some republicans who have repeatedly said, let mueller do his job, they're worried among them trey gowdy. gowdy angered, you remember, some on the right, many of them, actually, who were upset that he shot down the president's baseless accusations that the fbi implanted, quote, spies in the trump campaign.

now he says stzrok's mueller finds harder to take at face value. >> i don't know what mueller has. i do know this. that bias is so pervasive and anyone who ever stood in front of a jury and had to explain it away will tell you it is the most miserable feeling in the world, and i have never seen this level of bias. so you have peter strzok who can't think of a single american who voted for donald trump and you have peter strzok who will say, we'll stop it. how do you feel if you're bob mueller and present that to a jury? >> he said trey gowdy tried to make it right with republicans when he went nuts and basically undermined their conspiracy theory, that there were spies in the trump campaign. having said that, trey gowdy is leaving congress. he is a straight shooter and this means that there should be

some credence to what he says, no? >> well, what he's doing is what the president has been doing for a while now, which is seeking to cast out the investigation. so the president has been, with his tweets, with his public comments, trying to undermine the investigation, you know, create suspicion around any findings that come out, and he sees that it's working. and so they're continuing to do that. so i think this is part of that effort. >> has trey gowdy jumped on that bandwagon, or is there a legitimate need for congress to see these documents about what went down in these investigations, or in particular, russia? >> i think it can be both. i think there is a sense. even jim comey in an op-ed said he welcomed this look and investigation into the fbi and what they have done. i think there is some legitimate oversight. but i also think katherine is right. there is a concerted effort led in the white house by members of

congress and its allies to try to undermine the mueller probe so that whatever he decides, whatever he announces is not legitimate. this is part of it. what struck me was when gowdy said there is pervasive bias. what's the definition of pervasive? you've got a couple of these fbi officials who were fired, by the way, almost a year ago by bob mueller, taken off the case, and it's unclear what he's talking about pervasive bias, but they're going to try to make it sound that way. >> we can't forget this is a republican group talking about a republican -- now, at least -- a republican-led justice department. and the person who has been most out front with this, of course, is the house chair devin nunes. listen to how he describes it. >> the fbi and doj know they've been put on notice. mr. rosenstein, the deputy

attorney general, have to decide if they want to be part of the clean-up crew or part of the cover-up crew. so if documents do not attempt to be turned over tomorrow, a clear pathway for everything else is not clear here in a couple days, there's going to be hell to pay wednesday morning. >> clearly devin nunes has been one of the most aggressive members in the administration, but i think there was a development last week that was kind of overlooked. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell in an interview with the washington examiner said, it's time for this mueller probe to wrap up. it's taken, quote, seemingly forever. mcconnell has been a guy that's kind of stepped aside and said the special counsel has to do its work, but even he is getting impatient, which i thought was pretty notable. >> final word. 10 seconds. >> in other investigations, the mueller probe has not been going on seemingly forever. anyone who has covered anything from ken starr, robert fiske to

ken starr, or who followed the benghazi stuff, no, it's not been going on forever. you made a point that the president hired ben strzok for a reason. >> thank you, guys, for such an in-depth discussion. wolf starts right after a break. applebee's 2 for $20, now with steak. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood.

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so don't wait. call unitedhealthcare now to request your free [decision guide.] hello, i'm wolf blitzer. it's 1:00 p.m. here in washington. wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us. we start with outrage here in the united states over immigration. the outcry over the separation of families at the u.s.-mexico border and the finger pointing right here in washington. only moments ago, we heard this from president trump. >> i say it's very strongly the democrats' fault. they're obstructionists and they are obstructing. the united states