Harris rejects Biden's trash comment about Trump supporters

Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday distanced herself from President Joe Biden's controversial comment that appeared to call supporters of Donald Trump “trash.”

“I object to any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” Harris told reporters before the Democratic presidential candidate flew to Raleigh, North Carolina, for campaign events.

“You heard my speech last night. I believe my work is about representing all people, whether they support me or not,” Harris said. “I will be a president for all Americans.”

Harris also said Biden “clarified” his Tuesday comment.

But she stressed that with less than a week to go before Election Day, her campaign is looking for all the votes it can get — and striving not to lose any.

“I'm going to spend the whole time talking to people, no matter who they voted for last time,” Harris said.

The vice president said she spoke with Biden on Tuesday evening, but they did not discuss what he said earlier in the night.

Biden had been participating in a video call on Tuesday about outreach to Latino voters when the conversation turned to the various racist jokes that comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made at a rally for the Republican candidate and former president in New York City on Sunday.

“Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a 'floating island of trash,'” Biden said on the call.

“They are good, decent, honorable people,” Biden said, referring to Puerto Ricans. “The only trash I see floating around out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and un-American. This is completely contrary to everything we have done.”

That comment quickly sparked criticism from Republicans who supported Trump. Within hours, the White House took the rare step of releasing an edited transcript of Biden's remarks. In this version, Biden appeared to say the “trash” was Hinchcliffe's demonization of Latinos, not Trump supporters.

Biden himself then took the even more unusual step of issuing his own statement, emphasizing that he did not want to call Trump supporters “trash.”

“Today I called the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico expressed by Trump's supporters at his Madison Square Garden rally as trash – that's the only word I can think of to describe it,” Biden said late Tuesday evening a tweet on X.

“His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That's all I wanted to say. The comments at this rally do not reflect who we are as a nation.”

Despite the cleanup, Biden's comments — garbled or not — threw a wrench into the Harris campaign's plan to emphasize her promise to govern for all Americans, regardless of party.

Instead, Harris allies appearing on Wednesday's morning news shows now had to answer questions about Biden's statements.

Biden's comment also complicated the Harris campaign's plan to exploit the backlash to Hinchcliffe's joke about Puerto Rico.

Pennsylvania, perhaps the most prized swing state in the 2024 election, has nearly 500,000 Puerto Rican residents, who make up the largest share of Latino voters in the state.

Hinchcliffe's comments threatened to anger at least some Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

In the 2016 election, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania by fewer than 45,000 votes, or less than 1% of the vote.

In 2020, Biden beat Trump in the state by fewer than 81,000 votes, a margin of less than 1.2%.