President Trump blasted Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Twitter Monday, claiming the senator “totally misrepresented” his comments after Durbin said Trump called Haiti, El Salvador and African nations “shithole countries.”
“Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting. Deals can’t get made when there is no trust!” Trump tweeted.
{mosads}
Durbin confirmed a report in The Washington Post that Trump had made the “shithole countries” remark during a meeting with lawmakers on immigration reform, telling reporters that the president made “hate-filled, vile and racist” comments.
“You’ve seen the comments in the press,” Durbin said Friday. “I’ve not seen one of them that’s inaccurate. To no surprise, the president started tweeting this morning, denying that he used those words. It is not true. He said these hate-filled things, and he said them repeatedly.”
Trump has denied that he made the comments on Twitter, although the White House did not initially deny the report.
Durbin also told reporters that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had immediately spoken out against Trump’s comments during the meeting.
Graham later said he had “said my piece directly” to Trump, declining to explicitly confirm or deny what was said.
However, GOP Sens. David Perdue (Ga.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.) have both said that Trump did not make the comments, after initially saying they couldn’t recall.
The comments were allegedly made during a meeting on immigration in the Oval Office.
Trump said Sunday that a deal to extend protections for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is “probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it.”
He has insisted the funding for his promised wall on the U.S.-Mexico border must be included in any DACA fix.
The battle for a DACA fix and wall funding comes as a possible government shutdown looms at the end of the week. Funding is set to run out on Friday, and lawmakers say they expect to pass a short-term package in order to continue negotiations on a larger bill.
Keeping the government running could prove to be difficult, as GOP lawmakers say they won’t vote for a package that doesn’t have defense spending, and Democrats insist that a DACA fix to protect certain immigrant brought to the U.S. illegally as children be included in the measure.