GOP rep: Durbin should have confronted Trump over comments at meeting

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said Wednesday that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) should have confronted President Trump in an Oval Office meeting last week in which the president reportedly decried immigration from “shithole countries.”

In an interview on CNN’s “New Day,” Kinzinger said that he was not supportive of Trump’s alleged comments, but criticized Durbin for confronting the president “through the media” instead of doing it in person.

“My senator, Dick Durbin, did not confront the president in the meeting. Instead, comes out and goes right to the media and does it through the media,” Kinzinger said. “Look, have the courage to confront the president in the meeting, like I guess Lindsey Graham did.”

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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has said that media reports detailing Trump’s remarks, in which he demanded to know why the U.S. should admit immigrants from “shithole countries” over those from places like Norway, are “basically accurate.”

But Graham has insisted that, after Trump made the comments, he confronted the president directly.

“Following comments by the President, I said my piece directly to him yesterday,” Graham said in a statement last Friday. “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.”

Trump has denied that he used such language to describe countries, like Haiti, El Salvador and several African nations, and two other lawmakers in the room, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.), said that Trump did not make the remarks, which have spurred backlash across the political spectrum.