During intervals from lying about the investigation into Russian meddling in the election Trump is lying about his administration’s policy and practice of taking children away from parents who immigrate illegally.

President Trump’s attempt to blame Democrats for separating migrant families at the border is renewing a political uproar over immigration, an issue that has challenged Trump throughout his presidency and threatens to grow more heated as he imposes more restrictions to stem the flow of illegal immigration.

In one of several misleading tweets during the holiday weekend, Trump pushed Democrats to change a “horrible law” that the president said mandated separating children from parents who enter the country illegally. But there is no law specifically requiring the government to take such action, and it’s also the policies of his own administration that have caused the family separation that advocacy groups and Democrats say is a crisis.

There is no such law; it’s his own administration’s policy and practice.

In April, more than 50,000 migrants were apprehended or otherwise deemed “inadmissible,” and administration officials have made clear that children will be separated from parents who enter the country illegally and are detained.

Some of those children will be lost and some of the lost children will be trafficked. Oh well! Nothing is too harsh for people who immigrate illegally.

Trump’s deflection offers a familiar playbook, critics of the administration’s policies say. In their view, Trump’s most recent comments are strategically similar to tactics he used when he ended the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and then insisted on hard-line measures in a bill to permanently protect “dreamers.”

“He used DACA kids as a bargaining chip, and it didn’t work,” said Kevin Appleby, the senior director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies, a nonpartisan think tank. “So now he’s using vulnerable Central American families for his nativist agenda. It’s shameless.”

If you had to come up with one word to sum up Donald Trump, on pain of being forced to spend time in his company, “shameless” would be a strong candidate. He’s psychopath-level shameless. He does not care; nothing will ever make him care; he is sealed off in a greasy tube of self-adoration, beyond the reach of shame or remorse.