(CNN) On Thursday afternoon, in a meeting on a potential deal on immigration, President Donald Trump disparaged immigrants from a numbers of countries including African nations and El Salvador.

No one -- not even Trump himself -- really disputes that.

The question appears to be whether Trump used the phrase "shithole countries" to describe these countries or whether he used some other coarse term. Trump tweeted Friday morning that "the language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used."

On the other hand, Sen Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who was in the meeting, said that Trump did, in fact, use the word "shithole" to describe the countries. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, seemed to confirm that report in a statement in which he said "following comments by the President, I said my piece directly to him yesterday."

(Two Trump allies -- Republicans Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia -- released a carefully-worded statement Friday ; "We do not recall the President saying these comments specifically," it read.")

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