The White House and Donald Trump's campaign clashed over whether President Joe Biden called Trump supporters "trash," notes the . "Washington Post".
The scandal in the presidential race erupted last night after Joe Biden criticized former President Donald Trump during a virtual event and later denied calling Trump supporters "trash".
Biden was speaking at a rally for Latino voters when he took issue with a racist slur by a speaker at Trump's rally in Puerto Rico over the weekend.
"Just a day ago, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ``floating island of garbage,'' Biden said, referring to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's comment at a Trump rally Sunday in New York.
The president then, as he tends to do lately, pointing to the Washington Post, blundered into suggesting that Hinchcliffe's characterization was not how he would describe the Puerto Ricans he knew.
>
"They are good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating there are his supporters. "His -- his -- demonizing Latinos is unconscionable and un-American," Biden said, according to an audio recording by a Washington Post reporter who overheard the conversation.
When asked for comment, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement: "The president called the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally garbage.
The White House initially released a transcript of Biden's remarks that it claimed showed him saying "supporters"(“supporters”). A few hours later, the White House released a new transcript in which the word was "supporter's“, apparently referring only to the comedian.
According to a person familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the change came after White House officials spoke with the president, who wanted to say that the comedian's language was "garbage".
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign seized on the moment, declaring in an email: "Kamala Harris's running mate just offended tens of millions of Americans. Will Kamala apologize and recant Joe Biden's remarks?".
"Earlier today, I called the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico uttered by a Trump supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally trash -- that's the only word I can think of to describe it. Biden said in "X". "His demonization of Hispanics is unconscionable. That's all I wanted to say. The comments at this rally do not reflect who we are as a nation".
As for Biden, the president has a track record of verbal gaffes that have long weighed on his time in public service — and which in part fueled Democrats' concerns and precipitated his decision to end his re-election campaign this summer, the " ;Washington Post".
"The New York Times" looks at how Donald Trump is taking advantage of the divide among black and Latino voters. His anti-immigrant messages expose long-standing tensions and call into question Democrats' hopes for solidarity, the newspaper noted.
For months, the Trump campaign and its allies have effectively exploited divisions and bigotry in minority communities, turning them against immigrants and against each other.
Trump's social media posts warn black and Latino voters that immigrants are coming for their jobs. His promises to save cities that have been "conquered and captured" have been a feature of his rallies, including one on Sunday in New York, a city where politicians have long stoked racial divisions to win elections.
In many ways, these appeals to black and Latino voters are not fundamentally different from those aimed at white voters: Illegal immigration can be blamed for your problems. The lack of affordable housing? Stagnation in wages? Problems in schools? Urban crime? Mass deportation is a single, seemingly simple solution - goes the argument.
The "us versus them" has long characterized political unions across the ideological spectrum. But Trump has been far more direct than any other presidential candidate in his invitation to black and Latino voters to be part of "us," as long as they recognize that there is also a "them".
One of the Trump campaign's most widely distributed Spanish-language TV ads, which attacked Kamala Harris for her support of medical care for transgender immigrants, said: "Kamala Harris is with them. President Trump is with us."
At the Trump rally in "Madison Square Garden" on Sunday, a number of Trump campaign insiders made some of the most openly anti-immigrant and racist remarks of the campaign — especially while speaking to a crowd that was more racially diverse than most Trump rallies.
Tucker Carlson, a conservative pundit, called Harris, who is black and Indian, "California's first Samoan-Malaysian former U.S. attorney with a low IQ." Stephen Miller, Trump's policy adviser, said: "America is for Americans and Americans alone.” - a version of a slogan used by the Ku Klux Klan.
Whether all this will attract more black and Latino voters than it will repel is a question only the election itself will answer. The Trump campaign distanced itself from the remarks of one of the speakers - a comedian who called the US territory of Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage".
CBD News reports Trump as saying, "I think trash is worse.” and compared the comment to a 2016 speech by Hillary Clinton, when she called half of Trump's supporters "despicable." Trump added that it was "a terrible thing to say.
"Please forgive him because he doesn't know what he said,", Trump said jokingly to Biden.