by Michael Shellenberger vai Public substack,
Yesterday, former President Donald Trump drove around Wisconsin in a garbage truck saying, "250 million people are not garbage."
Trump was referring to President Joe Biden’s comment on a Zoom call on Tuesday, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his [Trump’s] supporters.”
The White House and media say Biden was misunderstood. Biden only "appeared" to call Trump voters "garbage," said the New York Times.
The Washington Post called the "garbage" reference "disputed."
The White House told reporters that Biden wasn’t referring to Trump’s supporters but to the comedian who on Saturday made a joke about Puerto Rico’s garbage problem. And in the official White House transcript of Biden’s Zoom call, the sentence reads, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos…”
But what Biden said is clear from the video, even progressive news outlets now admit that Biden did, indeed, call Trump’s supporters “garbage,” and, as we were the first to point out yesterday morning, the White House appears to have violated the Presidential Records Act by altering official transcripts.
By 4:45 pm yesterday, House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik and Oversight Chairman James Comer had sent a letter to the White House demanding that it preserve all communications and documents related to the editing.
“White House staff cannot re-write the words of the President of the United States to be more politically on message,” they wrote.
The Washington Post, whose owner Jeff Bezos on Tuesday recommitted his newspaper to balanced coverage, reported that what Biden said was just part of his "record of verbal gaffes," whereas "Trump has for years vilified his political opponents with vicious... attacks..."
Such spin shows that the newspaper has a long way to go to achieving the balance Bezos seeks.
While Trump has said harsh things about his political opponents, he has never labeled the Americans who voted for his opponents as garbage.
And Biden’s remark is consistent with the contempt Democratic leaders have shown for Trump voters. Barack Obama faulted voters who “cling” to their religion by voting for his opponents. Hillary Clinton called Trump voters “deplorables.” And both Barack and Michelle Obama recently claimed black men who voted for Trump were sexist.
These events suggest we could be in for a rough ride between now and election day. What could happen?
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