opportunity that perhaps if they can smuggle their children across and their children get citizenship and we have chain migration hold on. let s get let s not be disingenuous, democrats have nothing to do with this they absolutely do. no, no, no. this is a donald trump policy that was put forward by jeff sessions. his attorney general. if donald trump was against separating these children, he s not someone to shy away from criticizing and securing his attorney general and skewering his attorney general. he s been dead silent on this issue, embracing what jeff sessions is doing. the fact of the matter is he s going to have blood on his hands at the end of the day. these are children being ripped apart i guess obama and george bush have blood on their hands the point, as steven colinson said, it s been 15 years. this falls not just on republicans but on democrats. this falls on both. why is it they are six months they had years under the obama administration, th
reporting. ed lavandera, thank you. cnn white house reporter steven colinson with us now. i want to go back to the president s tweet where he said democrats can fixed forced family breakup by working with republicans on new life for a change. he is putting the onus on democrats, but he also does not have to be implementing this no-tolerance policy or practice which is what s causing the separation. he could stop it at any time, is that correct? yes, that s correct. what happened under the zero-tolerance policy is people undocumented coming across the border are being funneled into the criminal justice system. before this was brought in may, they were largely put into the civil deportation legal stream. what that means is that the united states authorities do not put children with their parents in jail. that s where this separation
all right. thank you. we re going to bring in stoo steven colinson. i want to read something to you. this is new this morning. he said you cannot publicly castrate your own secretary of state without giving yourself that binary choice. that binary choice being the u.s. choosing between war or north korea or on iran that s capable of threatening the u.s. with nuclear weapons. so steven, it s pretty strong language coming from the man who is essentially tasked with working with the white house to come up with a remedy here. that s right. bob corker is going to be a key player in deciding what happens to the iran deal in congress and you can see now that he has said that he s not running for re-election he has no compunction about being deeply critical of the president. what he s talking about there is i think the president s tweet while rex tillerson was in asia
handing over these compounds back to russian officials. i think that would be a tact in washington and fairly or unfairly it would raise more questions why is president trump sort of it would seem if he handed back these compounds going easy on russia. and so ambassador, you know, cnn s steven colinson put it very well, saying the two leaders have been circling one another, intrigued yet at a distance. but now they re going to be face to face. there are an awful lot of things that they could be talking about, including the russian meddling into u.s. elections. mr. ambassador, what do you believe could really come from this meeting? is it just sizing one another up or is there something substantive here? the key issue will be what kind of trades are possible? so for the ukraine issue, which really has been the number one issue between russia and the west, the trade is fairly clear. if russia pulls out of eastern
willing to speak about that. countdown to a potentially fascinating week. steven and julian, thanks so much. stay with us. we will talk more, meantime don t miss a minute of james comey s testimony this thursday. watch our special coverage beginning at 9:00 a.m. right here on cnn. all right. also straight ahead, pro tetters marching right now in new york, washington, and dozens of other cities around the country with one goal, get to the bottom of russia s interference in the election. plus the president of france quickly attacking president trump for his decision to leave the paris climate accord and the newly elected leader is not stopping there. he s a nascar champion who s she s a world-class swimmer who s stared down the best in her sport.