Biden says he intended to denounce comedian, not Trump supporters, in ‘garbage’ comments | US election 2024

Joe Biden issued a statement saying earlier Tuesday that he had “intended to say” that a pro-Trump comedian’s “hateful rhetoric” about Puerto Rico was “rubbish.” But in an edited video clip already circulating widely on social media on Tuesday night, one sentence that came out of Biden’s mouth was “the only trash I see floating out there is his supporters”.

Republican politicians and right-wing media quickly picked up the clip to argue that Biden had called Trump’s supporters trash, comparing his remarks to Hillary Clinton’s labeling of half of Trump’s supporters as belonging to “a basket of deplorables” in 2016, a comment that is widespread. seen as undermining her campaign.

Biden’s full comments on Tuesday are somewhat garbled, with some reporters transcribing the remarks claiming that Biden really appeared to be trying to refer to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s remarks, not all of Trump’s supporters, while others reported that the president had actually suggested that Trump supporters themselves were trash.

Biden’s comment came during a Zoom call with Voto Latino, where Biden referenced Hinchcliffe’s comments, saying the Puerto Ricans he knows are “good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters’ — his — his demonization of things is unconscionable and it’s un-American and it’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done.” But it wasn’t entirely clear whether he had said the singular “supporters” or the plural “supporters,” describing Trump’s base more broadly.

In the official transcript of Biden’s remarks released Tuesday night by the White House press office, the comment has an apostrophe: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters’ — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it’s un-American. .”

Speaking at a campaign event with Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio called the remark “breaking news” and told Trump supporters that Biden had dismissed large numbers of ordinary Americans as “garbage”, while conservative outlets reinforced the remark. Biden quickly tweeted that he had “meant to say” that the comedian’s remarks were “rubbish.”

Outrage over Biden’s “garbage” remarks comes on what was supposed to be a big night for Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, as she tried to make her closing argument for the campaign, urging the country to “turn the page” on Trump. Harris spoke in front of tens of thousands of supporters in Washington DC. She made her case at the site where Trump addressed his supporters on January 6, before many of them continued to storm the US capital in an attempt to stop the certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Biden’s slightly garbled original comments mark another rebuke for a politician prone to falsification on the eve of a very tight election.

Polling averages show Harris and Trump remain locked in what The Guardian’s poll tracker is calling a nail-bitingly close presidential race.

On Tuesday night, pollster Nate Silver stated tweeted that if Harris loses, “you’re going to get a hot offer … from me about Joe Biden”.

Hinchcliffe, the host of a podcast called Kill Tony, was the first speaker at a rally for Trump at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night. His racist comments have drawn widespread condemnation, including from Republicans, and were even repudiated by the Trump campaign.

“There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe said. He also said that Latinos “love to make babies … There’s no way to pull out. They don’t. They come inside, just like they did in our country.”

NBC reported that Hinchcliffe had tested the same joke about Puerto Rico, and that the joke bombed, at a comedy set in New York the night before the Trump rally.