The US president has argued that the rhetoric of the Republican candidate’s fans is “un-American”
Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are “garbage,” outgoing US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday. He later claimed that he misspoke and meant to condemn a specific speaker at Trump’s recent Madison Square Garden rally.
Biden made the comments during a Zoom call organized by the Hispanic advocacy group Voto Latino. He began by bringing up comedian Tony Hinchcliffe who made a joke on Sunday comparing Puerto Rico to “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.”
“Just the other day, a speaker at [the Trump] rally called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage,” Biden said, adding that Puerto Ricans are “good, decent honorable people.”
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” Biden stressed. “It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”
The president went on to accuse Trump of trying to “divide the country based on race,” and insisted that the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, “will be a president for all of America.”
Biden later took to X to clarify that he had “referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage.”
“That’s all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation,” Biden wrote.
The president’s remarks were quickly condemned by Trump’s allies. “He’s talking about everyday Americans who love their country,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said, urging the Harris campaign to apologize. “We are not garbage, we are patriots who love America,” Rubio said during a Trump rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Hinchcliffe accused Democrats of overreacting to his set at the Madison Square Garden event. “These people have no sense of humor,” he wrote on X on Sunday, arguing that the Harris team had taken the joke out of context “to make it seem racist.”
Both Democrats and Republicans have frequently accused each other of hateful rhetoric and demonization. Some conservatives have drawn a parallel between Biden’s ‘garbage’ comment and that of Hillary Clinton, who described Trump supporters in 2016 as a “basket of deplorables.” Trump has recently been criticized for labeling his opponents an “enemy from within.”