'A deeply bad person': Ex-White House official reams Kirstjen Nielsen for lying about kids in cages

Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former deputy chief of staff for President Barack Obama, speculated on Wednesday that DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen "is incompetent or she is a deeply bad person."

Following Nielsen's testimony that migrant children have never been held in "cages," Mastromonaco reacted with condemnation.

"I don’t think I’ve ever worked with anyone, myself included, that would have implemented [family separations]," Mastromonaco told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell. "I mean, that’s the fundamental problem here, they thought it was a good idea. They separated families and they put kids in cages. They had no way to track them, which means they had no way to reunite them."

"And secretary Nielsen said in her testimony yesterday that they really don’t know how many people have died in their custody," she continued. "So, I mean, I don’t even think in any other administration it would have gotten to the point where you had to kick it up to the president because you would have known better."

According to the former White House staffer, it is not credible for Nielsen to claim that DHS does not put children in cages because the detention circumstances have been verified by members of Congress and the news media.

"Anyone who has watched [MSNBC's] coverage, which is incredible, knows exactly what’s happening," Mastromonaco said. "There were kids that had no play time, couldn’t talk to their parents. It is absurd that she can try to put forward anything other than what it really is. They were cages."

"And I think that the sort of troubling thing about her testimony is that it leads you to one of two conclusions," Mastromonaco added. "Either she is incompetent or she is a deeply bad person."

Watch the video below from MSNBC.