President Joe Biden has tried to clarify his comments after he appeared to call supporters of Donald Trump “garbage”, sparking conservative uproar.
He was responding to a comic who courted controversy during a routine at a Trump rally on Sunday by referring to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage”.
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden was initially quoted as saying on Tuesday, prompting Republican backlash.
The White House later released a transcript which included an apostrophe, and said the president was talking about the words of Trump rally comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, and not tens of millions of Trump supporters.
“The only garbage I see floating out there is [Trump’s] supporter’s… his demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” the transcript reads.
Biden himself later addressed his video call with non-profit organisation Voto Latino, writing on X: “Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage – which is the only word I can think of to describe it.
“His demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at a briefing that Biden “does not view Trump supporters or anybody who supports Trump, as garbage”.
But Trump’s backers have seized upon the comments, making comparisons with a controversial remark by Hillary Clinton in 2016 during Trump’s first run for office, when she said half of Trump’s supporters were from a “basket of deplorables”.
As the war of words escalated, Trump himself suggested Kamala Harris – his rival for the White House – was running a “campaign of hate”.
Democrats have in turn criticised Trump for railing at his own rallies against “the enemy from within”, which he has said refers to “radical left lunatics” and a couple of Democratic lawmakers.
At his rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump said Biden’s words were “worse” than what Clinton said.
“You know what’s worse than anything? Garbage, We’re garbage” he said, going on to praise his supporters as the “heart and soul of America”.
Asked about the remark on Wednesday, Harris said Biden had “clarified his comments”, adding: “Let me be clear, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”
Biden’s comments on the furore threatened to overshadow a rally on Tuesday evening by Kamala Harris, who is running for the White House as the Democratic nominee after Biden pulled out earlier in the contest.
Harris delivered what her campaign has called her “closing argument” in Washington DC – at the spot from which Trump spoke shortly before a riot by his supporters at the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021.
She urged voters to “turn the page on the drama and the conflict” in American politics.
The Madison Square Garden rally referred to by Biden – during which Hinchcliffe and others sparked offence with a range of comments – was defended on Tuesday by Trump as a “lovefest”.
He acknowledged that “somebody said some bad things”, but said he did not think it was “a big deal”.
Trump stopped short of issuing an apology demanded by prominent figures from the island itself, which is a US territory. A number of Republicans – including from neighbourhoods with strong Latino populations – expressed outrage.
In Philadelphia, in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, members of the 90,000-strong Puerto Rican population told the BBC they would not forget the joke.
Residents of Puerto Rico – a US island territory in the Caribbean – are unable to vote in presidential elections, but the large diaspora in the US can.
North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
