Politics

Senator confirms Trump’s ‘shithole’ remark, says there was so much more

A Democratic senator who was in the room when President Trump reportedly made vile comments about “shithole countries” confirmed Friday that the commander-in-chief did, in fact, use the offensive language.

“I cannot believe that in the history of the White House, in that Oval Office, any president has ever spoken words that I personally heard our president speak yesterday,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), according to CNN.

“You’ve seen the comments in the press. I’ve not read 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,” Durbin added.

In a series of tweets early Friday, Trump denied using the phrase.

“The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made – a big setback for DACA!” he said in one of the tweets. He also denied reports that he said anything derogatory about Haiti.

Sen. Dick Durbin (left) sits next to President Trump during a bipartisan meeting.Reuters

Durbin described the discussions in the Oval Office in detail.

“When the question was raised about Haitians, for example — we have a group that have temporary protected status in the United States because they were the victims of crises and disasters and political upheaval. The largest group is El Salvador and the second is Honduran and the third is Haitian, and when I mentioned that fact to him, he said, ‘Haitians? Do we need more Haitians?'” Durbin recounted, NBC News reported.

“And then he went on when we started to describe the immigration from Africa that was being protected in this bipartisan measure. That’s when he used these vile and vulgar comments, calling the nations they come from ‘shitholes.’ The exact word used by the president, not just once, but repeatedly,” he said.

Durbin added: “I cannot imagine a moment where a president sunk to that depth, that’s what breaks my heart.”