White House officials were pressured into altering the transcript of a Joe Biden call in which he appeared to refer to Donald Trump supporters as “garbage,” according to a report by the Associated Press, citing two U.S. government officials and an internal email.
The president had been criticizing a comment by a comedian at Trump’s New York rally last weekend calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
He told a call with Latino supporters: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters [or supporter’s] — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
The comments caused a storm among conservatives – despite the Republican candidate routinely insulting, denigrating and threatening his political opponents, and even calling the United States a “garbage can” on multiple occasions in recent speeches.
The White House released a transcript intended to show that Biden had been referring simply to the comedian – putting an apostrophe into the word “supporter’s” to signify a singular person and suggesting the president had changed his line of thought while speaking.
However, the AP reports that two officials now say that the original transcript prepared by staff had the word supporters – denoting plural – without the apostrophe.
The agency reports that the change was made after the press office “conferred with the president,” according to an internal email from the head of the stenographers’ office seen by the AP. It said that two government officials had confirmed that the email was authentic.
The two-person stenography team on duty reportedly said any changes would have to be approved by their supervisor.
However, the supervisor was not immediately available to review the recording and the press office went ahead and published the altered transcript, posting it on social media and the White House website and distributing it to the media.
Biden himself put out a statement saying he was only talking about “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.”
In the email, the supervisor said that the press office’s handling of the matter was a “breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.”
The supervisor wrote: “If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently.”
It added: “Our Stenography Office transcript — released to our distro, which includes the National Archives — is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff.”
They also wrote: “Regardless of urgency, it is essential to our transcripts’ authenticity and legitimacy that we adhere to consistent protocol for requesting edits, approval, and release.”
White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told the AP: “The President confirmed in his tweet on Tuesday evening that he was addressing the hateful rhetoric from the comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. That was reflected in the transcript.”
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
Trump and his campaign seized on the comments, with the Republican candidate himself staging a stunt in Wisconsin where he was driven around an airstrip in a garbage truck with Trump branding before taking questions while leaning out of the window.
However, some commentators pointed out that the event only served to remind people of the origin of the outrage – the insult to Puerto Rico at his own rally.
His apparent struggle to open the door of the truck also raised more concerns about his physical and mental health, especially since he has refused to release his medical records.
