A top cabinet level official has denied President Trump used the word "sh*thole" to describe Haiti or African countries in a meeting with top lawmakers in his office last week. That didn't stop Democrats from pushing their agenda or putting aside real issues to focus on the sideshow created after a Washington Post story citing two people that were not in the room kicked off this firestorm last week.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy preached from his perch in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, saying that President Trump had said "the most vulgar and racist things I've ever heard a president of either party utter."

Now Leahy was not in the room and so could not have heard the president utter the word "sh*thole" but that didn't stop him from saying so. "In fact I've never heard any president of either party, Republican or Democrat utter anything even similar," Leahy said in his rambling prelude to his question for Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Leahy, the 77-year-old senior senator from Vermont, eventually got to his point.

"Madame Secretary, you were in the room, you are under oath, did President Trump use this word or a substantially similar word to describe certain countries?"

"I did not hear that word used, no sir," Nielsen replied.

"That's not the question. Did he use anything similar to that to describe certain countries?" Leahy asked.

"The conversation was very impassioned, I don't dispute that the president was using tough language, others were also using tough language," Nielsen said.

The media has been going non-stop on what word the president said or didn't say, allowing them to ignore the overall issue of immigration reform and push their agenda-based narrative that the president is an outright racist.

Secretary Nielsen explained to Leahy that the context of the meeting and the conversation using "tough language" was around the United States moving to a merit-based immigration system, similar to Canada and Australia, and away from a quota system.

Not interested in the context or in exploring a possible change in the immigration system, Senator Leahy pressed on.

"Did he use what would be considered vulgar language to describe certain countries?" Leahy asked.

"The president used tough language in general as did other congressmen in the room," Nielsen said.

Despite the non-stop denunciation of President Trump as a racist since this story broke last Thursday, his approval numbers have barely moved. Rasmussen, the only polling firm conducting a daily tracking poll on presidential approval, shows 45% of Americans approve of the job President Trump is doing. That is down just one point from last week.