https://www.vox.com/2018/1/12/16885312/trump-shithole-countr...

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) told the Post and Courier that his South Carolina colleague Sen. Lindsey Graham, who attended the meeting, told him Trump’s reported comments were “basically accurate.”

And Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who also didn’t attend the meeting, told the Washington Post he heard about Trump’s comments before they went public, and they matched the later reports.

https://www.vox.com/2018/1/16/16897016/trump-shithole-shitho...

Anonymous Republican sources have pushed the story that Trump in fact used the phrase “shithouse countries.” According to the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey, Robert Costa, and Ashley Parker, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Perdue (R-GA) told the White House that’s what they remember Trump saying in the meeting.

Trump has apparently decided that the controversy is hurting him politically, so his allies are using this minor discrepancy to justify public denials that he said “shithole.”