I agree with you 100% about culture being important. I know from experience that a lot of what separates jobs I hated from jobs I really enjoyed was the team culture that management builds.
This company though, I think they were just trying to cover up their own incompetency. Like they just completely forgot about me, then when I turned back up, they had to come up with a reason. I don't like their culture either after seeing how they move.
Definitely sounds like BS. When I hear words like budget and culture, I automatically assume racism and they didn't feel you deserved the salary you desired. They'd rather pay a less talented white the same/more or another non white a lesser amount. Culture is important, but gauging that someone isn't a good fit after you've interviewed to hell, is messed up. You couldn't figure that out from the first interview?
Pfft.
I don't think I've been to a company that hasn't done that.
Yo started the meeting telling me he didn't have all the data and proceeded to daydream about the end product functionality. "Yeah we could add a button that automatically refreshes the data at the source...". LOL Sir, you don't have any data to refresh at the source.