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Friday, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) backed up a Washington Post report claiming President Donald Trump referred to certain nations as “shithole countries” in a bipartisan meeting Trump held with members of Congress on immigration policy. Durbin’s remarks were made to reporters and captured by MSNBC’s camera. Durbin also criticized Trump for his use of the term “chain migration” because according to the Senate Minority Whip, it was offensive to African-Americans that “migrated” to the United States chains.

Earlier today, President Trump denied saying that the TPS countries such as Haiti were "sh*tholes". I knew there were Democrats in the meeting, so I figured they would come forth with their side, and sure enough: Geoff Bennett ‏ @GeoffRBennett Sen. Dick Durbin now knocking down Trump's denial: "It's not true. He said those hateful things, and he said them repeatedly." https://twitter.com/GeoffRBennett/status/951820707461296128 People who attended the immigration meeting where Trump made his "shithole" comment: -President Donald Trump -Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) -Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) -Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) -Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) -Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) -Rep. Robert Goodlatte...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, released the following statement in response to leaked memos from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) implementing President Trump’s controversial executive orders on immigration.  "These guidelines are now the official policy of the Trump Administration, implementing the President's mass deportation Executive Orders. I have called on my counterpart on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Chairman John Cornyn, to hold hearings on these orders—we need an immediate public examination in Congress of these heavy-handed, anti-family policies. The Senate should also pass the bill...

Donald Trump’s long-time but informal adviser Roger Stone says the Secretary of State job was dangled in front of Mitt Romney in order to “torture” him for previously opposing the president-elect. During a Sunday appearance on InfoWars with Alex Jones, a conspiratorial media outlet that has become a mouthpiece of the next president, Stone called Romney a “choker” and said that Trump was simply toying with him. “Donald Trump was interviewing Mitt Romney for Secretary of State in order to torture him,” Stone claimed on the program. “To toy with him. And given the history, that’s completely understandable. Mitt Romney...

In tonight's Commander-In-Chief forum that just finished, I think that Trump really did well and I think Hillary was on the defensive the whole time. First let's set the stage. This was about foreign policy. And she is the retiring secretary of state. So if she doesn't win this fight, she's not going to win too many others. And she spent the entire month vilifying Trump and saying that he's not qualified to be a good commander-in-chief. And tonight, she failed to make it stick, and Trump made clear that her accusations really are inappropriate. At the start of...

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry suggested Monday that the physical wall Donald Trump wants to build along the U.S.-Mexico border is an idea that will never become a reality. "I'm for Donald Trump, and he says we're going to build a wall, the Mexicans are gonna pay for it," Perry, a Trump backer, told Snapchat's Peter Hamby on "Good Luck America." Hamby responded, "It's not going to happen." "Well, it's not," Perry replied, suggesting that there might be other ways to keep out immigrants besides an actual wall.

As Donald Trump held closed-door meetings Thursday with top Republican leaders, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois cautioned that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee's "radical" and "extreme" positions will pose a challenge for Republican candidates in Illinois, including U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk. Kirk, who is up for re-election, has said he will support his party's presidential nominee — even if it is Trump — but will not attend the GOP's national convention in Cleveland in July. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, who is not on the ballot in November, said he will not attend the party's presidential nominating convention — nor...

After calling for a fast as Indiana headed to the polls, Glenn Beck has finally weighed in on the news that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has canceled his campaign after losing the Indiana primary to Donald Trump. Beck, an ardent supporter of Cruz, campaigned tirelessly for the Texas senator throughout the primary season, starting first in Iowa and concluding in Indiana yesterday.

Polling begun and completed after the March 10 debate shows radical changes in Ohio and Illinois ahead of their March 15 primaries. In both primaries, Ted Cruz is surging, on the strength of a strong debate performance. In Ohio, a winner take all primary with 66 delegates on the line, the latest poll by CBS, conducted from March 9-11, shows Trump and Kasich tied at 33% each with Ted Cruz surging to 27% up from his pre-debate showing of 19%. Easy to dismiss as an outlier? Not if you also look at CBS' Illinois poll that has Trump leading by...

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) says, current gas prices have gone down and the government is "missing an opportunity" to increase the gas tax. At a press conference in Chicago on Friday Durbin said, "Two weeks ago I paid $1.51 a gallon for gasoline in downstate Illinois. Clearly, the price of gasoline has gone down dramatically, as has the price of a barrel of oil -- which I think is below $30." "I think we're missing an opportunity here -- a 5-cent increase in the federal gas tax can really fund an infrastructure program that can help create new jobs in...

So, 18 Ezekiels Walk Into A Bar, and 2 of them said:"The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge"...

Former Texas governor Rick Perry's presidential campaign is no longer paying its staff because fundraising has dried up, while his cash-flush allied super PAC is preparing to expand its political operation to compensate for the campaign's shortcomings, campaign and super PAC officials and other Republicans familiar with the operation said late Monday. Perry, who has struggled to gain traction in his second presidential run, has stopped paying his staff at the national headquarters in Austin as well as in the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, according to a Republican familiar with the Perry...

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry lashed out at fellow Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Sunday over “offensive” comments the real estate mogul made about Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Trump questioned McCain’s status as a war hero over the weekend — but the gaffe could cost him with an important base of Republican voters: military veterans. Perry, who served in the Air Force, called Trump’s comments a “bullet that went through John McCain and hit a lot of us that were in the uniform of this country.” Trump taunted McCain on Saturday at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa....

The White House today welcomed a Federal advisory panel's recommendation to cut legal immigration by one-third. But the proposals met fierce opposition from Hispanic, Asian-American, Roman Catholic and Jewish groups, as well as from the National Association of Manufacturers. (SNIP) Representative Dick Armey, the Texas Republican who is the House majority leader, said: "The commission fails to tell us why we should so dramatically reduce legal immigration. It is long on recommendations, but short on analysis." He said the proposals were "a misguided attempt to make legal immigrants the scapegoats for America's problems."

I reported the other day that the Young Guns Network, a group led by two former top aides to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, is spending $100,000 in the primary between Sen. Richard Lugar and state treasurer Richard Mourdock in a bid to protect the Indiana incumbent - and here's what some of that mail looks like. A lit piece that the YG Network dropped focuses, as they'd said it would, on energy policy - but it is targeted to non-Republicans, as it reminds voters that Indiana's GOP primary is an open one in which Democrats and independents can vote.

Dick Morris has been sending out e-mails claiming Tea Party conservatives are trying to commit political suicide by trying to defund obamacare... (video/Selfie)

There is just no escape from the Weiner jokes. Apparently former congressman Anthony Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, granted the New York Times Magazine a long interview with the intent of preparing the public for a new post-tweet exposure scandal campaign for public office, most likely for New York mayor. However, if Weiner  thought he could put the scandal, and the jokes, behind him he would be wrong. Although the extended profile of over 8300 words written by Jonathan Van Meter was mostly sympathetic, it just couldn't resist repeating an absolutely hilarious Weiner joke as told by former DNC...

AP) IOWA CITY, Iowa - An Iowa Board of Regents member worked behind the scenes to create a university institute honoring her husband, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, and then pushed for its approval before two of the couple’s allies left the board, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. The 2011 email from then-Iowa State University Provost Elizabeth Hoffman describes the top-secret process that Ruth Harkin and a small group of officials pursued in planning the Harkin Institute of Public Policy, which remains mired in controversy nearly two years later. It noted that an ethics scandal involving a...

Someone is running amok at C-SPAN, the nonprofit network where political junkies get their kicks watching the inner workings of Congress. In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, as most of the country partied away the first few hours of the 2013, anyone who was watching C-SPAN at 1:27 a.m., breathlessly waiting for the Senate to pass a deal on the fiscal cliff, would have seen a somewhat odd caption over Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin: “Just Plain Dick.” The caption was memorialized by Erin Skinner Cochran on Twitter, and reported by Jim Romenesko on his media blog.

Regarding the fantasies that there will be a day when a large percentage of voters will see the error of their ways, resulting in a mass defection of the Democrat Party...