The controversy surrounding comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s racist comments about Puerto Ricans has ended up leading to a clash between the White House and Donald Trump’s campaign over whether or not the president, Joe Biden, has insulted his followers. In a virtual event with Voto Latino, Biden seemed to call the magnate’s followers “trash,” although the White House has quickly come out to clarify this.
“The other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage,’ Biden started and, from here, the current problem has begun. “They are good, decent and honorable people. The only trash I see floating around are his supporters. “His demonization of Latinos is inconceivable and un-American,” Biden continued with a hoarse voice and with some stutters that interrupted his sentences.
The Trump campaign, which is cornered by the discomfort that racist jokes have generated with a group of key voters such as Latinos, has found the perfect distraction in these 16 seconds of video. One of the first to retweet the video and share it was, of course, Elon Musk.
The Trump campaign has also sent a text message to its supporters saying: “Kamala Joe Biden’s boss just called all my followers trash!”
Immediately, the White House has come out to qualify Biden’s words. “The president referred to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as garbage,” Andrew Bates said in a statement. Shortly after, Biden himself posted a clarification about the comment on Twitter. “Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico that the Trump supporter uttered at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage, which is the only word I can think of to describe it. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I wanted to say. The comments at that rally do not reflect who we are as a nation,” the president wrote.
The president’s statements, and the discussion about who they were referring to, represent a lifeline that the Republicans will not hesitate to use. While the Democrats find themselves with a new problem less than a week before the elections. Harris has spent the entire campaign building a narrative in which she has extended her hand to Trump’s followers and at no time has she wanted to attack them.
The strategy is based on the mistake that Democrats learned in 2016 with Hilary Clinton, who referred to Trump’s followers as “deplorables.” Some statements for which the Democrat later had to apologize and they cost her very dearly. Now, with Biden’s gaffe, the fear of a repeat of the same situation is on the table.
Biden’s lapses and gaffes are nothing new. In recent years, they had become increasingly frequent and in fact these were the ones that triggered all the pressure for him to end up resigning as a presidential candidate. Although even with Biden out of the race, it seems that Democrats cannot escape this type of controversy.
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