The White House changed the official transcript of President Joe Biden‘s disputed remarks regarding former President Donald Trump’s supporters.
White House press aides made the changes to the transcript, stenographed by career, nonpolitical federal employees, on Tuesday, according to two government officials and an internal email obtained Thursday by the Associated Press.
According to the original transcript, Biden told the Latino advocacy organization Voto Latino during a campaign call, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
But the transcript released by the White House’s press office included an apostrophe, so it read “supporter’s” and not “supporters,” after speaking with Biden but not the head of the stenography office as is protocol.
The White House did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment, but spokesman Andrew Bates told the Associated Press that Biden “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,” Bates said.
In an email to White House communicators director Ben LaBolt, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and others from the head of the stenography office, the supervisor described the press staffers’s behavior as “a breach of protocol and spoilation 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. “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.”
Republicans, including House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY), are considering launching a congressional investigation into the matter.
Biden’s comment has created problems for Vice President Kamala Harris on the campaign trail as Trump fundraises off of the remark and Republicans compare it to 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton‘s “basket of deplorables” statement eight years ago.
Moments after Biden concluded the call in the White House residence on Tuesday, Harris spoke at the nearby Ellipse about the importance of unity and bipartisanship.
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“I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” Harris said Wednesday at Joint Base Andrews before another day on the campaign trail. “As you heard in my speech last night and continuously throughout my career, I believe that the work that I do is about representing all the people, whether they support me or not.”
Biden’s “garbage” comment was in reference to a joke made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Sunday. Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico, the diaspora from which is comprises a significant voting demographic, a “floating island of garbage.”
