It turns out Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) did not actually hear a Republican House leader tell President Barack Obama, “I cannot even stand to look at you.”
Rather, Durbin heard about the alleged confrontation from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who supposedly heard it from an anonymous White House source.
WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 15: (L-R) Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) (Getty Images)
Reid told his Democratic caucus about the alleged comment during a private meeting last week, two senatorsconfirmed to the Huffington Post.
White House press secretary Jay Carney on Wednesday denied Durbin’s initial charge, which he posted on Facebook Sunday. On Thursday, the administration reiterated that no confrontation between the president and a Republican congressman took place during recent budget negotiations, and apologized for what it characterized as a “miscommunication.”
“While the quote attributed to a Republican lawmaker in the House GOP meeting with the president is not accurate, there was a miscommunication when the White House read out that meeting to Senate Democrats, and we regret the misunderstanding,” a White House official told Talking Points Memo.
According to the Huffington Post, when pressed for details about what the White House told Democratic leaders that could have led to the “miscommunication,” a White House official said he was not “going to read out the details of private meetings with the president, or private meetings between [White House] and [Democratic] leaders.”
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