Source: John Moore, Getty Images

(2018-06-22) — As news broke that a little girl crying at the Mexican border — seen by millions in a viral photo — was never actually separated from her mother by federal immigration agents, social media erupted with an even more distressing image of another weeping girl. The photographer who captured both pictures suggested the second child may have been reacting to Trump administration policy that deprived her of a cookie.

Getty photographer John Moore, whose iconic immigration photo appeared on the cover of Time magazine, said his new-found fame has driven him to take “more pictures that may not actually portray what’s happening at the moment, and yet do illustrate the terrible Trump toll.”

For this latest assignment, Moore said he tracked the two-year-old girl’s mother — an apparent shoplifter — inside of a grocery store for nearly an hour.

“In a stroke of luck,” Moore said, “I knelt down and snapped a series seven photos just as the toddler learned she would not immediately receive a cookie her Mom had promised as a reward if she were a good girl.”

Moore said he attributes the girl’s cookie deprivation to “the cultural norms, the deception, and the rash of broken promises fostered by Trump administration policy.”

“Oftentimes…[this] is talked about in terms of statistics,” Moore said, “and when you put a human face and humanize an issue, you make people feel. And when you make people feel, they have compassion. And if I’ve done just a little bit of that, then that’s OK.”

In related news, President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, has reportedly pressed her father to issue an executive order restoring the cookie to the girl.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress plan to meet tonight behind closed doors for an argument about the cookie that some will later leak to the media.