Following days of international condemnation, Donald Trump announced on Sunday that he is “not a racist,” and denied that he had used the word “shithole” to describe African nations during an Oval Office meeting on immigration last week. “I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you,” he told reporters as he arrived at Trump International Golf Club in what has become a characteristic use of superlatives (in 2015, Trump argued that he was “probably the least racist person on Earth,” and at a White House news conference last year, he professed to be “the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life”).

But the storm around Trump’s alleged comments is not simply fueling debates about his fitness for office—it’s also dividing his own party, and deepening the gulf between Democrats and Republicans as both sides struggle to reach a deal to fund the government and protect undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers. While Trump told reporters in Palm Beach that he is “ready, willing, and able” to sign legislation codifying DACA, he also suggested that the deal would fall apart over the Democratic approach.

Trump’s comments on Sunday were a departure from the White House’s initial statement, which did not deny the comments outright, but noted that the president did not denigrate Haiti, as was alleged. While the president veered off script, his party also spent the weekend quibbling over what was said and where the disputed comments sit on the scale of moral repugnance. Senator Lindsey Graham essentially confirmed the account of Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who went on the record to describe Trump’s use of the word “shithole,” and issued a statement saying he’d rebuked the president during the meeting. Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, after initially saying they could not recall what Trump had said, adjusted their talking points on a tour of Sunday news programs. Purdue said Durbin had committed a “gross misrepresentation” of the president’s words, and Cotton argued on CBS’s Face the Nation that Durbin “has a history of misrepresenting what happens in White House meetings.” (Ben Marter, a spokesman for Durbin, responded on Twitter: “Credibility is something that’s built by being consistently honest over time,” he wrote. “Senator Durbin has it. Senator Perdue does not. Ask anyone who’s dealt with both.”) Senator Rand Paul, who has become an unlikely ally of the administration, admitted it was not “constructive” for Trump to have referred to certain countries as “shitholes,” but argued that it was “unfair to call him racist.”

As each side continues to bash the other, hopes for an immigration deal are waning. Last week, Trump’s comments derailed a tentative bipartisan agreement that would have addressed the issue, and on Sunday, Trump punctured any cross-party progress by claiming that Democrats were refusing to cooperate. “DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it, they just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our Military,” he tweeted. His comments sparked exasperation from Republican Jeff Flake. “I can tell you I’ve been negotiating and working with the Democrats on immigration for 17 years,” he said on This Week. “And the Democrats are negotiating in good faith.”

In his eagerness to bash Democrats, Trump has once again lurched into the path of his own legislative agenda. As demonstrated by both his tweets and his bewildering efforts at negotiation, the primary obstacle to a DACA deal remains the president himself—a frustrating reality that has become all too familiar for Republicans. Meanwhile, the fate of hundreds of thousands of Dreamers hangs on Trump’s every move. And, if Trump continues to resist a bipartisan deal on immigration, Democrats may use a nuclear option to make their voices heard. Without an agreement on a spending bill, the government will shut off its lights at the end of the week. Republicans plan to adopt a short-term funding bill without a deal on DACA—a likely nonstarter for Democrats. If Trump thought the uproar over his “shithole” comments inflamed the immigration debate, things will only get worse if lawmakers are arguing in the dark.