How a missing apostrophe led to uproar over US President Joe Biden's 'garbage' remark

Officials at the White House altered the official transcript of a call in which outgoing United States (US) President Joe Biden appeared to take a swipe at supporters of Donald Trump, drawing objections from the federal workers who document such remarks for posterity, the news agency Associated Press reported on Thursday (Oct 31) citing sources.

President Bidencreated an uproar earlier this week with his remarks to Latino activists responding to racist comments at a Trump rally made by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who referred to the USisland territory of Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”

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 demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

The missing apostrophe that led tothe uproar

According to the Associated Press report, the transcript released by the White House office, however, rendered the quote with an apostrophe, reading “supporter’s” rather than “supporters,” which aides said pointed to Biden criticising Hinchcliffe, not the millions of Americans who were 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 news agency.

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.”

The supervisor said that if there was a difference in "interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently."

“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,” the supervisor added.

The edit of the transcript came as the White House scrambled to respond to a wave of queries from reporters about Biden’s comments. Vice President and current Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harrisdistanced herself from Biden’s comments.

'We are not garbage'

Supporters of Donald Trump rejected the remarks made by Biden."We're not garbage, we're not trash. We're the American people," said Heather Johnson outside a Trump rally venue in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

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"My reaction is this is a Hillary Clinton deplorable moment of this campaign and that the American people are better than this. Don't know what this campaign feels it has to go so negative against an entire population at this point even the polls say that's half of America," Johnson told the news agency Reuters.

Another Trump supporter Chad Solomon said, "I believe everything that basicallyBidensays is garbage himself, as well as Kamala Harris, and I mean that with a straight face. I mean what he's trying to implement the past four years was inflation, the border crisis, foreign affairs is a mess. and it's been ridiculous."

(With inputs from agencies)