The controversy surrounding comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s racist comments against Puerto Ricans eventually led to a clash between the White House and Donald Trump’s campaign over whether or not President Joe Biden insulted his supporters. During a virtual event with Voto Latino, Biden appeared to refer to the mogul’s supporters as “trash,” although the White House quickly moved to clarify that point.
“The other day a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage,’” Biden said, and that’s where the current problem started. “They are good, honest and honorable people. The only trash I see floating around are his supporters. “His demonization of Latinos is inconceivable and un-American,” Biden continued in a hoarse voice and with some stuttering that interrupted his sentences.
The Trump campaign, cornered by the unease that racist jokes have generated among a key voter group like Latinos, found the perfect distraction in these 16 seconds of video. One of the first to retweet the video and share it was of course Elon Musk.
The Trump campaign also sent a text message to his supporters saying, “Kamala Joe Biden’s boss just called all my supporters trash!” »
Immediately, the White House came out to qualify Biden’s remarks. “The president called the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally trash,” Andrew Bates said in a statement. Shortly after, Biden himself issued a clarification regarding this comment on Twitter. “Earlier today, I called the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico that the Trump supporter uttered at his Madison Square Garden rally trash, which is the only word I can think of to describe it. His demonization of Latinos is unacceptable. That’s all I wanted to say. The comments at this rally do not reflect who we are as a nation,” the president wrote.
The president’s statements and the debate over who they were referring to represent a lifeline that Republicans will not hesitate to use. While Democrats find themselves facing a new problem less than a week before the elections. Harris spent the entire campaign constructing a narrative in which she reached out to Trump supporters and at no point did she want to attack them.
This strategy relies on the mistake Democrats learned in 2016 from Hilary Clinton, who called Trump supporters “deplorables.” Statements for which the Democrat later had to apologize and which cost her dearly. Now, with Biden’s gaffe, the fear of a repeat of the same situation is on the table.
Biden’s mistakes and gaffes are nothing new. In recent years, they had become more and more frequent and these were actually the ones that triggered all the pressure for him to eventually resign his presidential candidacy. Even though Biden is out of the race, it seems Democrats can’t escape this type of controversy.
