The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing was intended to be a long-scheduled discussion of border walls, but suddenly Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, was being quizzed repeatedly about the vulgar word, or words, said to have been uttered by the president describing the countries of origin of African immigrants.
Ms. Nielsen was asked about the Oval Office episode in which President Trump has been quoted by participants as calling African nations “shithole countries,” and she responded: “I did not hear that word used.”
She conceded that it might have been said without her hearing it, and said she could not recall the president’s characterization of African countries.
“The conversation was very impassioned,” Ms. Nielsen told members of the committee, pressed on the matter repeatedly. “I don’t dispute that the president was using tough language. Others in the room were also using tough language.”
Pressed directly by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois — who attended the Oval Office meeting, and reiterated in an interview on Tuesday that he had heard Mr. Trump use the offending phrase — Ms. Nielsen said the president had become “impassioned” and was “using some strong language.”
Continue reading the main story“I don’t remember a specific word,” she said.
Other senators suggested the word used might have been “shithouse.” And Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who was also present at the Oval Office meeting last week, said the episode had devolved into an “s-show.”
It was a remarkable exchange in a town more accustomed to policy jargon than expletives, at least in public. And it demonstrated how far the discourse has fallen in a high-stakes negotiation over an immigration plan meant to protect about 800,000 immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children who could face deportation as soon as March.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, gave a carefully worded denial to reporters outside the White House early Tuesday, saying that Mr. Trump “hasn’t said he didn’t use strong language.”
“He’s passionate about it,” she added. “He’s not going to apologize for trying to fix our immigration system.”
Several people familiar with the immigration meeting said last week that the president had used the phrase and questioned why Haitians should receive protection in the plan, as Mr. Durbin and Mr. Graham pushed back on him.
The White House initially did not dispute the account, and Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, two Republicans who were also present, initially said they could not recall what was said. But Mr. Cotton and Mr. Perdue changed their stories over the weekend, attacking Mr. Durbin’s account of the meeting.
On Tuesday, Mr. Durbin told CNN, “I stand by every word I said.”
“Senator Cotton and Senator Perdue should remember a word as gross as that in the course of a conversation with the president of the United States,” he added.
Asked about whether Mr. Cotton and Mr. Perdue could be technically correct if Mr. Trump had instead said “shithouse,” Mr. Durbin was incredulous.
“Let me say they’re wrong,” he said. “I can tell you explicitly they are wrong. And let me also say, is that their defense? That s-house is acceptable, s-hole he would never say? Come on. To think that the president of the United States would refer to any country on earth as an s-house country, for goodness’ sakes, what does that say?”
Continue reading the main story