Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois has removed the controversial Facebook post that sparked a firestorm last week after he accused a then unnamed Republican of having said ‘I cannot even stand to look at you’ to the President during a shutdown negotiation meeting. That claim was based on second-hand information, which turned out to be erroneous.
Republicans immediately denied the referenced incident, as did the White House. It was later blamed on a miscommunication stemming from a White House reading of that meeting to Senate Democrats. Even further clarification came to light when more details were revealed about how the erroneous statement made the rounds in the first place.
Durbin later added a follow-up Facebook post addressing the “miscommunication.” But he’d left the initial comment on his Facebook page – until late yesterday.
That initial Facebook post is now gone. The Associated Press (via MyFOXChicago.com) reported on Durbin’s reasoning for not removing the post earlier.
On Monday, Durbin said there was never any misunderstanding, at least not on his part. He also said when a “staffer in the White House” told him and other senators about the meeting, he found the comments so “earth-shattering” that he wrote them down verbatim.The Illinois Democrat, one of the president’s most loyal defenders, said when the White House admitted it had “misled members of Congress,” he posted that on his Facebook page. But he was not about to take down the original post, at least not for a while.”If I’d have raced to take it off, you (the media) would have done that story too: `Durbin races to take this off.’ I wanted to put into context how I got into this situation,” he said.Durbin said Monday that he’s now satisfied that it’s clear he didn’t make up the quote. Within a couple hours, the only evidence of the dispute was a Facebook post in which Durbin expressed his appreciation for “this clarification from the White House.”
Funny, there doesn’t seem to be an apology posted anywhere.
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