close
close

Biden's 'garbage' gaffe defended by White House as Harris distances herself from POTUS

Kamala Harris distanced herself from Joe Biden's “garbage” gaffe today amid a very close election campaign, but the White House insists it's all about the apostrophe.

“Just to be clear, he did not call Trump supporters trash,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the start of Wednesday’s briefing, as the blast radius of Biden’s comments on a campaign Zoom call continued to grow last night, drawing contempt from people like Donald Trump. “He doesn’t view Trump supporters or anyone who supports Trump as trash.”

For a politician who has made verbal stumbles part of his trademark, Biden may have skipped his ideal successor's final push with voters by falling into the “he said, he really said” quicksand.

As the vice president concluded her well-received speech to about 70,000 supporters across the street from the White House on Tuesday evening, Biden sat inside and chatted with VoteLatino. In that call, the incumbent addressed comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's widely criticized disparaging comments about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of trash” at MAGAfest on October 27 at New York's Madison Square Garden.

“They are good, decent, honorable people,” a somewhat hesitant POTUS said of Puerto Ricans on Tuesday. “The only trash I see floating around out there is his supporters… his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and un-American.”

Biden quickly tried to retract his comment and posted a clarifying tweet about it. Additionally, the government released a transcript that labeled the comment “supporter” rather than “supporter” to single out Hinchcliffe.

Regardless, the reaction from the often insulting and foul-mouthed Trump and other Republicans was swift and harsh. Earlier today, Harris, in damage control mode, said: “Look, I think, first of all, he's clarified his comments, but let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”

Biden's ill-timed remarks dominated most of the news cycle overnight and well into Wednesday, less than a week until Election Day.

Given the close polls, Vice President Harris has put some distance between herself and the president several times today. “Listen, I think, first of all, he clarified his comments, but let me be clear: I object to any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” the vice president said before takeoff on the tarmac next to Air Force 2 Am On Wednesday there was a storm in the embattled states. Later at a campaign rally offstage, Harris repeated the remarks in a full-length interview with ABC News World news tonight later today – – which the network previewed this afternoon.

Seeking to regain his footing and assert his own version of moral high ground after the vice president's powerful Ellipse speech, Trump mocked both Biden and Harris at a rally in North Carolina, saying, “You can't lead America if you that Americans don’t love.”

Of course, even if Trump avoided further comments about “enemies within” and declared that he was “not Hitler,” it's hard to turn the tables when the GOP candidate subsequently called Harris “a low-IQ person” and the Democrats “low lives.” Trump went back to his usual list of tricks today, spending a lot of time today mispronouncing the vice president's name and going on and on to his supporters in North Carolina about how great he was in the April 10 debate September was with Harris, a match he was widely considered to have lost. Trump also praised his supporters' “superior people” today, repeating lies that FEMA did nothing for hurricane relief and that 2020 was stolen from him.

Still, there is no doubt that the White House wanted to move heaven and earth to bury Biden's own nonsensical comments.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, October 30, 2024.

“Look, the president wanted to clarify because he understood that … what he said should be taken out of context,” Jean-Pierre told the White House press office on Wednesday. “So he wanted to express very, very clearly what he wanted to say,” Jean-Pierre added.

“He spoke of hateful rhetoric, and we spoke of hateful rhetoric from here,” the press secretary continued. “Obviously this hateful rhetoric targeted a specific community… the Puerto Rican community. They are Americans. This is a community he respects and he wanted to make sure he expressed that. And hateful rhetoric should be on display. It should be. But at the same time, the president is a president for everything he will continue to do. He will continue to be there for everyone.”

While Republicans have piled on about Biden's comments last night, there has been occasional pushback over the utterly dire state of the whole thing

“I wonder if you hold the same standard that you describe for former President Trump, because he used all kinds of language to talk about Democrats, calling them 'human scum,'” CNN's Boris Sanchez asked Rep. Marcus Molinaro (R-NY). ) this morning about the ex-POTUS's litany of insults and attempts to frame the larger context of the deterioration of political discourse in America in the Trump era.

I call for balls and strikes,” replied the congressman, straddling the bipartisan fence. “Every American deserves a government that respects them.”

You may also like...