Senator Insists Trump Used ‘Vile and Racist’ Language


President Trump during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Thursday.

President Trump on Friday offered a vague denial about the language he chose to use about immigrants during a private meeting with lawmakers at the White House on Thursday, when he reportedly referred to African nations as “shithole countries.”

But Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said on Friday that the president did use the term “shithole,” repeatedly, during the course of the meeting on immigration — which Mr. Durbin attended. The senator described Mr. Trump as saying “things which were hate-filled, vile and racist.”

In a Twitter post on Friday, just hours before the president was scheduled to sign a proclamation to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is Monday, Mr. Trump appeared to parse the language he spoke about immigrants from different regions of the world.

The president wrote that he never said of Haitians, “take them out.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/us/politics/trump-immigration-congress.html?emc=edit_na_20180112&nl=breaking-news&nlid=54795170&ref=cta