Lindsey Graham says Trump isn’t racist after s***hole row

A Republican senator disputed on Thursday that Donald Trump is a racist, following reports about the president describing majority-black countries as ‘s***holes’ amid tense immigration negotiations.

Trump is ‘absolutely not’ driven by racial animus, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on CNN, after flatly asking an interviewer to pose the question.

And as the West Wing decided this week how flexible to be on immigration issues, he claimed, he got bad advice from the people around him.

The ‘s***hole’ snipe, which Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin claimed was directed at Haiti and African nations, shouldn’t be taken as evidence of racial prejudice, Graham explained.

‘You can be as dark as charcoal [or] lily white, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re nice to him,’ he said.

Graham was on CNN explaining that Trump’s more conservative aides might have sabotaged an immigration deal by insisting on getting more concessions in exchange for saving DACA

DACA advocates are fond of casting their opponents as racists whose objections to the system are rooted in prejudice rather than in the rule of law

Graham’s comments about interference from hard-right Trump advisers seemed to be a swipe at Stephen Miller, a longtime Jeff Sessions hand in the Senate known for his conservatism

‘You can be the Pope and criticize him. It doesn’t matter. He’ll go after the Pope. You can be Putin and say nice things and he’ll like you.’

‘It’s not the color of your skin that matters,’ Graham continued. ‘It is not the content of your character. It is whether or not you show him respect and like him.’

Eric Trump, the president’s second son, said Wednesday on Fox News that the only color his father cares about is ‘green’ – a reference to the health of the U.S. economy.

Graham also said Thursday that the president had been close to agreeing on a deal that would pair funding for his promised border wall with relief for people who could lose so-called ‘DACA’ protection in March – only to be derailed by hard-liners on his staff who insisted on getting bigger concessions from Democrats.

‘The president laid out a pretty good idea, but there’s people in his ear in the White House who are outliers,’ Graham said, resisting the urge to name names.

‘There are people on his staff who have been working in the Senate, that are well known … there are people around the president who have an irrational view of immigration. They always have,’ he added, likely referring to domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller, a longtime Jeff Sessions hand in the Senate.

‘And if you follow that lead, we’ll never get anywhere.’

Graham said of Trump: ‘You can be as dark as charcoal [or] lily white, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re nice to him’

The president announced in the fall that he would terminate the DACA program in March, setting up a showdown with congressional Democrats that is coming into focus now

DACA, the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, protects hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from deportation because they were minors when they entered the United States.

Resolving their fate is the main point of leverage Trump has as he demands wall funding along with pot-sweeteners that include disallowing chain migration and replacing the diversity visa lottery with strictly merit-based immigration criteria.

Graham said the White House won’t be able to get its ‘comprehensive’ wish-list fulfilled in this first round of talks because it would leave Democrats with no leverage as they seek legal status for 11 million other illegal immigrants.

‘The country is with you, Mr. President, on securing the border,’ he told Trump through the TV camera. ‘The country is with you on helping these DACA kids.’

But ‘there are people around you who are giving you advice that’s just beyond what the market will bear,’ he added.

Presidential son Eric Trump said Wednesday on Fox News that his father doesn’t care about black or white – only ‘green,’ a reference to his obsession with the health of the U.S. economy

Graham said that on Tuesday morning at 10 o-clock, the president was enthusiastic about the contours of a deal that he and Durbin recommended.

But in the ensuing hours, he hinted, White House right-wingers derailed the plan by convincing Trump that conservatives would see it as weak.

‘Durbin indicated we had a bipartisan proposal, he ran through it with the president, the president said “That sounds very good, let’s talk about it”,’ he recalled.

‘I don’t know what happened between 10:00 and 12:00. The meeting did not go well. And we are where we are.’