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Senator Insists Trump Used ‘Vile and Racist’ Language A Senior Republican Senator Admonishes Trump: ‘American Is an Idea, Not a Race’
(about 5 hours later)
WASHINGTON — 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.” WASHINGTON — It was just after President Trump had finished railing in the Oval Office against African immigrants he said came from “shithole countries” when a senior Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who was there to negotiate a deal on immigration, spoke up.
But Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said on Friday that the president did use the term “shithole” 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.” “America is an idea, not a race,” Mr. Graham said, according to three people familiar with the exchange on Thursday. Diversity was a strength, he said, not a weakness. And by the way, the senator added, he himself was a descendant of immigrants who came to the United States from “shithole countries with no skills.”
In a Twitter post on Friday, just hours before the president signed a proclamation to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is Monday, Mr. Trump appeared to parse the language he used when he spoke about immigrants from different regions of the world. Mr. Trump’s racially charged comments in front of several lawmakers, which also extended to immigrants from Haiti — followed by a day in which members of Congress denounced the president, defended him or stayed silent — now threaten what had been an emerging agreement to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.
The president wrote that he never said of Haitians, “take them out.” Several people with knowledge of the conversation said the president had also demanded to know whether Haitian immigrants could be removed. The White House has not disputed the account of the exchange.
The Twitter post was his second about news accounts of a private meeting on Thursday at the White House. The president denied some aspects of reports on his language — but he did not comment on his reported use of the specific word “shithole” to describe African nations. The collapse of negotiations on an immigration deal would raise the risk of a government shutdown next week, given that many Democrats have said an immigration deal must be included in any measure to continue funding past a Jan. 19 deadline.
“It’s not true,” Mr. Durbin said of Mr. Trump’s denial. “He said these hate-filled things and he said them repeatedly.” To try to recover the political narrative, the president took to Twitter on Friday with a vague denial, saying his remarks at the meeting were “tough, but this was not the language used.”
Mr. Trump tweeted that his comments about Haitians were fabricated by Democrats, and said he “probably should record future meetings — unfortunately, no trust!” But Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, told reporters on Friday that the president had used the expletive several times, and had said “things which were hate-filled, vile and racist” during the meeting on immigration — which Mr. Durbin also attended.
In a discussion about immigration from African nations, Mr. Trump asked why he would want “all these people from shithole countries,” according to people with direct knowledge of the conversation. Mr. Trump also said the United States should admit more people from places like Norway, an overwhelmingly white country. “I cannot believe that, in the history of the White House in that Oval Office, any president has ever spoken the words that I personally heard our president speak yesterday,” Mr. Durbin said.
“Why do we need more Haitians?” Mr. Trump said, according to several news accounts, including The Washington Post. “Take them out.” Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, told The Post and Courier that Mr. Graham had related Mr. Trump’s remarks to him after the meeting, and he called news reports about them “basically accurate” based on that account.
The White House has not denied his use of racially charged rhetoric. According to three people briefed about the meeting, it featured a dramatic moment between the president and Mr. Graham, who referred to Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” but who has recently grown close to the president, advising him on immigration policy.
“I cannot believe that, in the history of the White House in that Oval Office, any president has ever spoken the words that I personally heard our president speak yesterday,” Mr. Durbin said on Friday. After Mr. Trump disparaged African nations in foul terms, they said, Mr. Graham answered with an impassioned defense of immigrants and immigration as pillars of the American ideals of diversity and inclusion.
At an event in Wisconsin on Friday, Speaker Paul D. Ryan described Mr. Trump’s comments as “very unfortunate” and “unhelpful.” Mr. Ryan went on to recall his own relatives immigrating to the United States from Ireland. Mr. Graham has not responded to repeated requests for comment on the president’s remarks or his own. But on Friday, he released a statement that appeared to confirm the tenor of both.
After Mr. Trump signed the proclamation for Martin Luther King Jr. Day later on Friday morning, the president ignored a question from a reporter about whether he is a racist. “Following comments by the president, I said my piece directly to him yesterday,” Mr. Graham said. “The president and all those attending the meeting know what I said and how I feel. I’ve always believed that America is an idea, not defined by its people but by its ideals.”
In an earlier tweet on Friday, Mr. Trump said, “The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used.” His tweet did not elaborate on what “tough” language he used and did not provide a specific account of the meeting. In Twitter posts on Friday, Mr. Trump charged that Democrats had fabricated parts of the exchange even as he defended the sentiment that prompted them, the latest turn in the saga surrounding a meeting on Thursday called to discuss progress toward a bipartisan immigration deal.
The president’s Twitter posts on Friday morning referred to the meeting with lawmakers a day earlier about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, the Obama-era effort that provided temporary work permits and reprieves from deportation to immigrants brought to the United States as children by their parents. Mr. Trump said he “never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country,” and denied that he had asked to remove them from the proposal, adding: “Made up by Dems.”
Mr. Trump’s reported remarks are the latest example of the president’s use of racially tinged language about immigrants. In a private meeting in June of last year, Mr. Trump said immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS.” In a joint statement released on Friday, two Republican senators who also attended the session, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, charged that Democrats were acting dishonorably in the immigration talks, claiming that they could not remember whether Mr. Trump used the words attributed to him.
The president’s first Twitter post Friday morning did not address the language he used, but instead called the immigration deal that would protect undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children “a big step backwards.” “President Trump brought everyone to the table this week and listened to both sides, but regrettably, it seems that not everyone is committed to negotiating in good faith,” the senators said. “In regards to Senator Durbin’s accusation, we do not recall the president saying these comments specifically but what he did call out was the imbalance in our current immigration system, which does not protect American workers and our national interest.”
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida, criticized Mr. Trump’s comments about Haitians. Still, some Republicans condemned the president’s remarks, as Democrats announced plans to introduce a resolution next week to formally censure him for them.
“Language like that shouldn’t be heard in locker rooms and it shouldn’t be heard in the White House,” Ms. Ros-Lehtinen said in a Twitter post. At an event in Wisconsin on Friday, Speaker Paul D. Ryan described Mr. Trump’s comments as “very unfortunate” and “unhelpful.” Mr. Ryan went on to recall how his own relatives immigrated to the United States from Ireland.
The president’s thoughts on immigration sprawled through several Twitter posts on Friday morning before he tweeted his denials about some of the language he used at the DACA meeting. Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, suggested the president’s inability to refrain from incendiary statements was detracting from his agenda.
The president met on Thursday with Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Mr. Durbin. The senators are working to codify the protections in DACA. “It’s an unacceptable view of the world and it’s an unacceptable thing to say,” Mr. Blunt told the radio station KMBZ. “You would expect the president to lead in determining how you filter your thoughts, rather than to continue to say things that take a lot away from what’s actually getting done.”
Representative Cedric L. Richmond of Louisiana, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Representative Jerrold B. Nadler of New York, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said they would call on Republican leaders to bring up a resolution reprimanding the president for “racist statements.”
“We have to show the world that this president does not represent the real feelings of most of the American people, which is part of the reason why he lost the popular vote,” they said in a joint statement. “Congress must speak with one voice in condemning these offensive and anti-American remarks. There is no excuse for it.”
The bipartisan backlash to the president’s comments intensified on Friday as Mr. Trump signed a proclamation at the White House for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, ignoring a question from a reporter about whether he is a racist.
The current debate about Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant talk unfolded one week before funding for the government is set to be exhausted without action from Congress, where Democrats have pressed to include an immigration plan to preserve protections for roughly 800,000 undocumented immigrants that Mr. Trump has moved to rescind. Under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program created by President Barack Obama that is commonly known as DACA, they have obtained temporary, renewable work permits. Mr. Trump announced in September he was ending the program, setting a six-month clock before the first permits would begin expiring and calling on Congress to enact legislation to create a permanent solution in the meantime.
A federal judge in San Francisco this week placed a nationwide injunction on that action, ordering the Trump administration to continue the program pending a legal challenge.
While lawmakers had been closing in on a bipartisan deal on the matter and Mr. Durbin and Mr. Graham had been hopeful that Mr. Trump was on the brink of endorsing it, the furor surrounding his remarks appeared to deepen the divisions surrounding any such plan, prompting the president to discount the chances of an agreement.
“The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter. “What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made - a big setback for DACA!”
The president’s incendiary comments on Thursday came during a session in which senators were describing a plan to end the lottery and allocate some of the visas instead to vulnerable populations from places including El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti that have had Temporary Protected Status in the United States. The measure under discussion would also provide legal status for DACA recipients and work permits for their parents, bar the children from sponsoring their parents for citizenship, and include $2.5 billion in border security funding.
Mr. Trump had responded approvingly to the proposal after hearing Mr. Graham and Mr. Durbin describe it over the phone on Thursday morning, according to people familiar with the conversations, but the pair arrived at the White House to brief the president about it not long after to find several Republicans they were not expecting sitting in on the session. Attendees were startled by the tone Mr. Trump took during the meeting, and by Friday morning, Mr. Trump was listing his objections to the measure on Twitter and working preemptively to shift blame if the dispute led to a government shutdown.
“USA would be forced to take large numbers of people from high crime countries which are doing badly,” Mr. Trump said of the immigration plan. “The Dems will threaten ‘shutdown,’ but what they are really doing is shutting down our military, at a time we need it most.”