Rachel Maddow was overcome with emotion as she attempted to read breaking news about the Trump Administration’s policies towards children of migrant parents.
The host of The Rachel Maddow Show could not hold back her tears Tuesday as she learned about so-called “tender age” shelters which reportedly have been set up to house babies and toddlers who have been forcibly removed from their parents who were caught crossing into America from Mexico.
Maddow tried to read the just-published Associated Press report but could not finish, forcing her to hand it over to her fellow MSNBC broadcaster Lawrence O’Donnell.
“This is incredible,” she exclaimed as the new story came across her desk. “Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children…” she started to say before getting choked up.
“To at least three…” she tried to continue but once again found herself unable to complete her sentence before having to take a pause.
In an attempt to avoid crying live on-air, Maddow asked for a graphic to be put up, but it was not available. She tried one more time to read the report but she was again too emotional.
“I think I’m going to have to hand this off. Sorry, that does it for us tonight. We’ll see you tomorrow,” she said before handing over to O’Donnell, who finished reading the report.
After she had regained her composure off-air, Maddow took to social media to apologize to viewers and to finish her report, this time on Twitter.
“Ugh, I’m sorry. If nothing else, it is my job to actually be able to speak while I’m on TV. What I was trying to do — when I suddenly couldn’t say/do anything,” she tweeted, before adding the script of what she was meant to have said while on-air.
“Again, I apologize for losing it there for a moment. Not the way I intended that to go, not by a mile.”
What upset Maddow so much was the AP report that the Trump administration had created three shelters in South Texas for migrant children dumbed “tender age”.
Lawyers and medical providers described the shelters to the AP as “playrooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis.”
A fourth shelter is being opened to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston, the publication reports.
Since President Donald Trump’s administration rolled out its “zero tolerance” immigration policy — which prosecutes undocumented immigrants who cross the border between the U.S. and Mexico — more than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents since April, according to the AP.
