Biden’s attempt to denounce ‘garbage’ comment gets messy

The president’s attempt to call out a Trump-rally speaker’s comments regarding Puerto Rico has backfired in spectacular fashion.

President Joe Biden’s late-game unforced error came in response to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s Sunday appearance at former President Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in New York City, where Hinchcliffe said there is “literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

Though the comedian’s comment drew swift criticism from both the left and the right — Trump’s campaign said Hinchcliffe’s attempt at a joke does not represent their views — Biden didn’t directly respond until he was asked about it during a call with Hispanic advocacy group Voto Latino on Tuesday.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters… his… his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been,” he said.

Trump was quick to take notice. The former president said that while he’s “running a campaign of positive solutions to save America, his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is offering “a campaign of hate.”

“She has spent all week comparing her political opponents to the most evil mass murderers in history. Now, on top of everything, Joe Biden calls our supporters ‘garbage.’ You can’t lead America if you don’t love the American people. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have shown they are both unfit to be President of the United States,” he wrote.

Harris also distanced herself from Biden on Wednesday saying Americans should “stop pointing fingers at each other.”

A transcript of Biden’s remarks offered by the White House attempted to clarify his intentions via an apostrophe. They showed his phrasing as the possessive “supporter’s” instead of the plural “supporters,” and this would match the singular “is” which Biden used while speaking, as opposed to the plural “are” he would have needed to address a gathering of Trump supporters (“Trump’s supporter’s language is garbage” vs “Trump’s supporters are garbage”).

Biden was also fast with a follow-up message shared on social media, in which he explained he was indeed referring “to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter” at the rally as “garbage,” not the attendees, speakers, or Trump supporters writ large.

“His demonization 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,” he said.

However, by that point, the fumble had been scooped up and rushed toward the ever-shifting goal posts.

”A mother mourning her son who died of a fentanyl overdose is not garbage. A truck driver who can’t afford rising diesel prices is not garbage. A father who wants to afford groceries is not garbage. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden ought to be ashamed of themselves,” Republican Vice Presidential Nominee JD Vance said on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said “so much for the ‘joy and unity’” and suggested Biden and Harris never had either in mind.

“It was all a ruse to cover up their disastrous policies that are destroying our country. Now in the final days, they’re showing their true disdain for the hardworking Americans who don’t support them. Shameful,” he wrote.

Former Republican presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Tim Scott said the best response for Republicans is to “get to work” and elect Trump.

“Garbage? What they say about us actually says more about them,” Scott said.

Still, any Republican outcry over Biden’s apparent-but-clarified trash talk rings somewhat hollow, considering their thrice-nominated candidate’s name-calling antics over the last decade.

According to a Wikipedia entry dedicated just to Trump’s oft-employed school-yard nomenclature, he has referred to his political opponents as “crooked,” “lyin,” “dumb as a rock,” “bird-brain,” “little,” “totally corrupt,” “sloppy,” “sleepy,” “slow,” “crazy,” “leakin,” “slimeball,” “Peekaboo,” “psycho,” “fake,” and “deranged,” among others.

He regularly refers to the entire Democratic Party as the “Communist Left” or the “Lunatic Left,” and its members as “radical left lunatics.” He calls journalists the “enemy of the people.”

Trump routinely — and at this point it’s fair to say deliberately — mispronounces the vice president’s first name, and for a time was routinely misspelling it, for no apparent reason, as “Kamabla.”

Several times in the last month — including at the Madison Square Garden rally — Trump has said that those who don’t support him are “the enemy from within” and at one point said that they present more of a threat to the U.S. than our outspoken foreign adversaries. He’s suggest that the U.S. military should be deployed against these American citizens.

“When I say the enemy from within, the other side goes crazy, becomes astounded. ‘Oh, how can he say…?’ No, they’ve done very bad things to this country. They are indeed the enemy from within,” Trump said Sunday.