Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday distanced herself from President Joe Biden’s controversial comments that appeared to criticize supporters of former President Donald Trump. “garbage.”
“I strongly oppose criticizing people based on who they vote for,” Harris told reporters before the Democratic presidential candidate flew to Raleigh, North Carolina, to campaign.
“You heard my speech last night. I believe my job is to represent all of our citizens, whether they support me or not,” Harris said. “I will be a president for all Americans.”
Harris also said Biden “clarified” comments he made on Tuesday.
But she stressed that with less than a week until Election Day, her campaign is looking for votes it can get and is careful not to lose any.
“I’m going to spend my full time talking to people, regardless of who they voted for last time,” Harris said.
The vice president said he spoke with Biden on Tuesday night but did not discuss his remarks earlier in the evening.
Biden was on a video call Tuesday about his support for Latino voters, when the conversation echoed a number of comments made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at the Republican candidate and former president’s rally in New York City on Sunday. The conversation turned to that racist joke.
“Just the other day, a speaker at a rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of trash,'” Biden said in a phone conversation.
“They are a good, decent, honorable people,” Biden said of Puerto Ricans. “The only garbage floating around out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and un-American. Totally against everything we’ve ever done.” Contrary.”
The comment immediately drew criticism from Republicans who support President Trump. Within hours, the White House took the unusual step of releasing a revised transcript of Biden’s remarks. In this version, Biden seemed to be saying that Hinchcliffe was demonizing Latinos, not Trump supporters.
Biden then took the even more unusual step of issuing a statement of his own, insisting he had no intention of calling Trump supporters “trash.”
“Earlier today, I referred to the hateful rhetoric against Puerto Rico spewed by President Trump’s supporters at the Madison Square Garden rally as trash. That’s the only word I can think of to describe it,” Biden said. he tweeted on the X show late Tuesday night. .
“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.”
Despite cleanup efforts, Biden’s comments, messed up or not, are a monkey wrench in the Harris campaign’s plan to emphasize her commitment to govern for all Americans, regardless of party. I threw it in.
Instead, Harris’ allies appearing on Wednesday morning news programs had to answer questions about Biden’s remarks.
Biden’s comments also complicated the Harris campaign’s plans to capitalize on the backlash over Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico.
Pennsylvania, perhaps the most closely watched battleground state in the 2024 election, is home to nearly 500,000 Puerto Ricans, making up the largest percentage of Latino voters in the state.
Hinchcliffe’s comments threaten to alienate at least some Puerto Rican voters in states such as Pennsylvania.
In the 2016 election, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania by less than 45,000 votes, or less than 1% of the vote.
In 2020, Biden defeated Trump in the state by fewer than 81,000 votes, or less than 1.2 percentage points.
