What a scumbag.

Via Chicago Tribune:

The White House said Thursday that Sen. Dick Durbin’s account of a Republican insult of President Barack Obama was an inaccurate “misunderstanding,” and an opponent of the senator criticized him for including the “discredited claim” in a fundraising pitch.

Durbin, in a Facebook posting Sunday and in a campaign email the same day, said that during shutdown talks an unnamed House Republican leader had told the president: “I cannot even stand to look at you.”

Questions about Durbin’s account led Obama spokesman Jay Carney to say Wednesday that he had spoken to someone who was at the meeting and concluded that “it did not happen.” […]

Republican Doug Truax, who has never held public office and is circulating petitions in a bid to challenge Durbin next year, criticized the senator for sending an emailed appeal for cash with what he called the “discredited claim,” and said Durbin should return any money raised by it.

A Truax aide gave the Tribune a copy of the Durbin fundraising email, which asks recipients to send his campaign $16, “one dollar for every day of the reckless and irresponsible Republican Shutdown.”

Durbin opened the email by saying: “People ask me: What was the lowest point in the Republican Shutdown?”

He cited Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, reading “Green Eggs and Ham” from the Senate floor; a woman with cancer turned away from the National Institutes of Health; and a family he described as “receiving veteran’s benefits for their quadriplegic son” who would face hardship if the payments were delayed.

“There was one incident — largely unreported — that I cannot get out of my mind,” he added.

Durbin then described Republicans going around a table telling the president their “complaints and demands” during a “negotiation,” adding that a member of the House GOP leadership told Obama: “I am so disgusted. I cannot even stand to look at you.”