[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 208 (Wednesday, December 10, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Page S8590]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              DONALD TRUMP

  Mr. DURBIN. The second thing I want to say, Mr. President, is to 
really note something said yesterday by the President of the United 
States Donald Trump.
  The year was 2018, 6 years ago, and President Trump challenged me and 
other Members of the Senate to come up with an immigration plan for the 
United States that included his big beautiful wall, if you remember. 
And so I went to work with several of my colleagues here and several on 
the Republican side to help write an immigration bill.
  I ended up calling the White House when I thought we came up with 
such a bill, a bipartisan bill, and they said: Come in and see the 
President this morning. Well, that kind of shocked me that I could get 
in that quickly to see him. But I appealed to my Republican colleagues, 
and we went down to the White House together to meet with the President 
in the Oval Office.
  The meeting was historic. It turned out that others had been 
invited--Democratic and Republican Senators and Congressmen--to discuss 
the issue, and they, frankly, didn't agree with the conclusions which 
we brought to the President.
  The President spoke at length on his views about immigration. The 
conversation declined at some point to a level I had never expected to 
witness in my life. The President started saying things about 
immigrants in ways I thought had never been said before in the White 
House. He used terminology, which I am not going to repeat on the 
Senate floor, but it referred to a phrase of ``s-hole'' nations. You 
can fill in the blank if you wish. But I was shocked to hear it, and I 
heard him refer to several countries in this fashion. I thought to 
myself, How did we reach a point that we discuss immigration in such 
crude and vulgar terms?
  After I left the White House, it leaked out what the President said, 
and the White House denied it. They said it didn't happen. I said it 
did. They said I am lying--to the point where two of my Republican 
Senate colleagues went on television several days later and said that I 
lied when I said the President made those statements.
  Well, yesterday at his rally in Pennsylvania, President Trump 
admitted that he had used the slur that I referred to earlier to 
disparage Haiti and African nations during that 2018 meeting with 
lawmakers, bragging about the comment that sparked global outrage 
during his first term.
  I want to put that in the Record because for 6 years I have lived 
with the shadow of people saying that I misled the American people as 
to what the President said. Yesterday, he admitted what he said. It is 
not for my sake but for the sake of discussing this issue of 
immigration because we have got to get beyond crudity and vulgarity and 
what we have seen in the extreme in the last several months when it 
comes to immigration.
  I will make it clear where I stand. We need an orderly process at our 
border, period. Second, we should never knowingly allow a dangerous 
person to come into this country. Third, if a person is in this country 
seeking legal status and commits a dangerous crime, they should be 
gone, period. Fourth, we cannot accept all of the people in the world 
who want to come to America and live in America at this point. I wish 
we could, but we can't. Some are important, and I want to stand up for 
them. We can't allow everyone. We need an orderly process to achieve 
this goal.
  We are a nation of immigrants, and I am proud of that fact. I hope 
everyone is. Let us make sure we do immigration the right way.
  The reference in 2018 was an embarrassment--an embarrassment to the 
White House, to the Oval Office, and to the Presidency. I am glad that 
the President has finally admitted what happened on that day.

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