No, Biden didn't lose 88,000 children One of Donald Trump's signature moves is to turn a criticism of him into an attack on his opponents. When Trump was president, he implemented a "zero tolerance" policy at the border that resulted in children being separated from their families. The policy was widely condemned before Trump reversed course. President Biden, calling it "a moral failure," made it a major issue in the 2020 presidential campaign. After Biden took office, he formed a task force to identify about 5,000 children who had been separated from their families. So it's no surprise that Trump would accuse Biden of doing something similar: "You know, we have 88,000 missing children now. Can you imagine if that were Trump that had 88,000 missing children, 88,000? That's a holocaust." It's also no surprise that he would wildly exaggerate the meaning of a number based on fact. The children aren't missing — and they aren't dead, as Trump said on another occasion: "Many of those children are dead, just like many of the hostages held by Hamas." In effect, they haven't responded to phone calls from a government agency. But Trump has a point that there might have been more outrage if he were president. When a similar statistic emerged during his presidency — though a much lower number, 1,475 — Democrats in 2018, including Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), decried "1,500 lost children," and The Washington Post published an article about the uproar, which included reference to a #WhereAreTheChildren campaign. We dug deep into this issue and explored what the numbers really mean. Click the link to read the full report and learn the Pinocchio rating. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. RFK Jr.'s distorted account of evidence he provided in a cousin's case Jaime Harrison, Democratic National Committee chair, posted a video in which he accused Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of spreading "false and racist claims" in his effort to clear his cousin Michael Skakel of murder charges, including writing a book about the murder case. Kennedy responded that the DNC had offered a "dishonest distortion of this story." But it's Kennedy who distorts the story in his response, in both small and significant ways. We went through Kennedy's statement line by line to examine his specific points and what was wrong with them. The legal travails of Skakel, 63, went on for decades. Martha Moxley, a 15-year-old neighbor of the Skakel family in the Belle Haven community of Greenwich, Conn., was found murdered under a pine tree at her home on Oct. 30, 1975. Skakel was also 15 at the time, and no one was initially charged. But years later suspicion turned to Skakel and he was convicted of her murder in 2002. In 2016, Kennedy published "Framed," a book arguing that Skakel had not murdered Moxley. Instead, citing claims made by a felon, he said he was "convinced" the murderers were a Black teen and another teen of "Asian/American Indian/Caucasian ancestry." In 2018, the Connecticut Supreme Court granted Skakel a new trial — for an entirely different reason. (In 2020, the state decided not to retry him, saying there was not enough evidence to prove guilt.) Click the link to read the full report. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP and @AdriUsero) or Facebook. We're also on TikTok. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. About the cats: It's a Friday and sometimes our fact checks deal with heavy subjects. So we hope to bring a smile to your face. Scroll down to read other immigration-related fact checks. | 
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