President Joe Biden made a crass reference to supporters of former President Donald Trump, sparking widespread condemnation from Americans.
The remarks, originally reported on X by NBC News’ Gabe Gutierrez, were intended to rally Latino voters Tuesday. They followed comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s off-color joke about Puerto Rico at Trump’s event Sunday at Madison Square Garden.
“Donald Trump has no character. He doesn’t give a damn about the Latino community,” Biden said on the video. “Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something. … The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
The remarks drew a sharp and swift rebuke—and even resulted in a rare clarification from Biden himself.
“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,” Biden wrote. “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.”
Biden’s repudiation of Trump supporters overshadowed Vice President Kamala Harris’ high-profile speech to thousands of supporters in Washington, D.C. Harris spoke at the Ellipse, just south of the White House, where Trump delivered his infamous remarks on Jan. 6, 2021.
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“[Trump] is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election, an election that he knew he lost,” Harris told her supporters.
More than 74 million Americans voted for Trump in 2020, the highest total ever for an incumbent president. With the 2024 presidential race tied nationally and in the seven swing states, Trump is aiming to pull off a feat next week once thought unimaginable.
His campaign was quick to condemn Biden’s comments Tuesday night.
“There’s no way to spin it: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t just hate President Trump, they despise the tens of millions of Americans who support him,” Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said in a statement.
Trump supporters—ranging from elected lawmakers to social media influencers—turned to X to lambaste Biden for insulting millions of Americans.
Biden’s comments drew comparisons to Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, who used a derogatory insult to insult his supporters less than two months before the election.
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” Clinton said at an LGBT fundraising event in 2016. “They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
Years earlier, while campaigning for president, Barack Obama uttered his own insult of conservatives.
“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama said in 2008.
More recently, Harris called Trump a “fascist.”
Trump survived two assassination attempts this year, the first by mere inches. He blamed Democrats’ dire warnings about him as a threat to democracy.
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country—both from the inside and out,” Trump said at the time.
Below are some of the many reactions to Biden’s “garbage” remark Tuesday.