There’s a little Washington kerfuffle going on right now over whether Dallas’ Pete Sessions, in a meeting of congressional Republicans with the president in October, said to him, “I can’t even stand to look at you.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it happened, and it was Sessions who said it. A Sessions spokeswoman denies it.
If it happened, it is reminiscent of the famous infamous incident in 1962 when Ted Dealey, the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, at a meeting of newspaper industry leaders at the White House, told John F. Kennedy to his face to “get off Carolyn’s tricycle” and lead the country. That incivility in the White House made headlines around the country, and would be brought up again and again after the assassination as proof of the dangerous currents alive in Dallas that became encapsulated in the tag “City of Hate.”
UPDATE: The White House is saying it didn’t happen, but Senator Dick Durbin, who made the original claim, is sticking with it.
