White House Changed Biden’s ‘Garbage’ Comment About Trump Supporters
“a breach of protocol and spoliation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.”
The Associated Press learned from White House sources that officials altered the transcript from President Joe Biden’s Zoom call where he called Trump supporters trash.
Yes, it has to do with the apostrophe in supporters:
Biden, according to a transcript prepared by the official White House stenographers, told the Latino group on a Tuesday evening video call, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
The transcript released by the White House press office, however, rendered the quote with an apostrophe, reading “supporter’s” rather than “supporters,” which aides said pointed to Biden criticizing Hinchcliffe, not the millions of Americans who are supporting Trump for president.
The change was made after the press office “conferred with the president,” according to an internal email from the head of the stenographers’ office that was obtained by The AP. The authenticity of the email was confirmed by two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The supervisor, in the email, called the press office’s handling of the matter “a breach of protocol and spoliation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.”
“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” the supervisor wrote, adding, “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.”
We have a video. We’re not stupid.
WATCH: President Joe Biden: "The only garbage I see floating out there is [Trump] supporters." pic.twitter.com/9teSUOytqC
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) October 30, 2024
I mean, their story isn’t much better because it negates the narrative of placing the comic’s joke on Trump.
The media spent three days harping on the joke and connecting it to Trump.
But the White House kept trying to say that Biden only meant the garbage comment towards the comedian.
So, either way, the administration screws itself.
Major props to the supervisor of the team for calling out the administration:
The supervisor, a career employee of the White House, raised the concerns about the press office action — but did not weigh in on the accuracy of the edit — in an email to White House communications director Ben LaBolt, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and other press and communications officials.
“Regardless of urgency, it is essential to our transcripts’ authenticity and legitimacy that we adhere to consistent protocol for requesting edits, approval, and release,” the supervisor wrote.
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Comments
It’s a grocer’s apostrophe, a simple plural.
No, the grocer’s apostrophe is the result of illiteracy.
This is the product of petty deceit.
This is the George Costanza Apostrophe, henceforth the “Costanza Apostrophe”.
I seem to recall a big hullabaloo about the sanctity of Presidential records…. or is it (D)ifferent?
Welcome to America’s version of the Soviet Union. What’s illegal does not matter. What’s real does not matter. The state defines truth. Read the NYT or the Washington Post to find out what you are supposed to believe.
It is patently absurd for anyone to argue that Joe* meant garbage that belongs to one or more of Trump’s supporters, as opposed to Trump’s supporters themselves being garbage.
If he were talking about actual refuse (not people), then what is there to be upset about? What would it matter whose garbage it is? Either way the comedian’s point would still be true… there is a bunch of garbage on the island.
And then there is the bitter “GET OFF MY LAWN!” tenor of the statement. Why would he be getting hostile if he was just talking about litter? It just doesn’t hold water. Not even remotely.
Then there is his years long history of calling Trump and his supporters every vile name he can think of, starting with “Hitler” and working his way down.
So OF COURSE he was referring to the people who support Trump as garbage.
Don’t be an idiot. Don’t be a gaslighting c*nt. Don’t buy into Joe Biden’s latest vile lie.
Please move along, nothing to see here. That Biden’s handlers are desperately attempting to memory hole the embarrassment that has become Joe Biden isn’t surprising. They’ve been doing it practically since Biden was installed in the White House. This might be the most egregious example but I’m sure there are plenty of other stealth edits to the Biden transcripts that have gone totally unnoticed and unmentioned by the official Stenography Office. The only difference here is that it’s so close to a pivotal election they simply couldn’t ignore it and hope the controversy went away. They had no choice but to respond no matter how ridiculous their response might be. And there we go and here we are.
The Whitehouse has finally clarified this. Trump is known to favor junk food. Joe was talking about Trump’s menu choices. He said “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supper orders.”
The officials that altered the transcript are a little late. Trump owns it with his high vis vest and riding in the garbage truck.
As I’ve mentioned here before, Biden’s internal narrative breaks into what he intends to say. The word “is” may indicate he intended the remark to refer to the comedian (a single person). But as he was delivering the line, his internal narrative was thinking “all Trump supporters are garbage, not just the comedian,” and that narrative broke through the filter and into his spoken words. You could say he “misspoke,” but if you accept this explanation, he still said what he was thinking although he didn’t mean to say it out loud. This may be what happened. If so, this in no way excuses him. The comment is still a true reflection of what he was thinking.
Looks to be a PRA violation. I’m gonna need the fake jurist of LI to explain how it’s not, because it’s (D)ifferent.
At least this prompted the revival of a great word, “spoliation,” which has sadly fallen into desuetude.