Last summer during the peak of the health care reform debate in Congress, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) claimed that if Republicans are “able to stop” President Obama’s push for health care reform, “it will be his Waterloo.” “It will break him,” DeMint said.

Today, during an interview with DeMint on ABC’s This Week, host Terry Moran aired audio of the quote and asked if it was appropriate to call for breaking the president. DeMint responded by lying, issuing an outright denial that he ever made the statement:

MORAN: So did you break him? And is that really how Americans want you to behave here in Washington, break the president? […]

DEMINT: I did not want this to be the President’s Waterloo. But pushing through a massive government take over of our health care system was certainly not a good idea. … We’ve been as Republicans pushing health care reform for years.

Later in the segment, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) called DeMint out:

MENENDEZ: Well Terry, my good friend Jim DeMint did want to break Barack Obama and the Republican whole political strategy is for this president and this Congress to fail. The sad thing about that it’s not about Barack Obama failing or Democrats in Congress failing, it’s about the country failing at one of the most critical challenges the country has had.

DEMINT: We’re just, we’re coming down to a matter of days. If we lose the health care battle, I think we’ve lost it all. [...]

And that’s why I’ve said strong things like Waterloo and other things. This is, the nation has to focus on this because the czars and other things are secondary in a way if we lose health care, the president’s going to be so emboldened, we’re going to see so much more of the growth at the executive branch level that, I don’t think we’ll be able to stop it. But if we stop him on health care then I think we have the opportunity to maybe realign the whole political system in our country.