Tom Cotton and David Perdue were in the room yesterday. They claim not to “recall” Trump’s comments.
By Andrew Prokopandrew@vox.com Jan 12, 2018, 2:25pm EST
Two Republican senators who attended yesterday’s meeting in which President Trump reportedly disparaged immigrants from “shithole countries” seem to have come down with a case of amnesia.
In a joint statement this afternoon, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Perdue (R-GA) wrote that they “do not recall the President saying those comments specifically” — but conspicuously didn’t outright deny that he said them.
Since Trump’s comments were confirmed by multiple other sources who attended the meeting or quickly heard about it, Cotton and Perdue’s statement doesn’t pass the laugh test. Indeed, it seems to be an unusually craven attempt to deny reality and curry favor with the president.
Trump’s “shithole” remark was first reported by the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey on Thursday afternoon. Per “several people briefed” on an Oval Office meeting Trump held with lawmakers that day, Dawsey wrote, Trump asked, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”
Dawsey’s report quickly drew an enormous amount of attention. And through Thursday night, Trump never denied making the comments, despite tweeting on several other topics. (Per NBC News, Trump was calling friends and allies to attempt to gauge how his comments would be received.)
Finally, by Friday morning, Trump appeared to conclude that the comments were politically inconvenient for him, and hazily denied them. “This was not the language used,” he tweeted.
Read more
https://www.vox.com/2018/1/12/16885312/trump-shithole-countries-denial
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