Did Biden mean to call Trump supporters ‘garbage,’ or just stumble defending Puerto Rico?

Did President Biden just call former President Trump’s supporters — nearly half the American electorate — “garbage”?

That’s what it sounded like he said in an interview Tuesday, and Republicans have been hammering him for doing so. But Biden said it’s not what he meant, that he was just denouncing “hateful rhetoric.” His team has pushed back on the reading of his words — even as they acknowledge he stumbled over them.

Will Biden’s remarks matter to voters in a race that he is not running in, which he in fact dropped out of in part because he sometimes appears befuddled when speaking, and in which Trump has routinely made similar and worse remarks about America as a whole and about various subgroups within the electorate?

Republicans say it should; Democrats say that’s absurd.

During an interview Tuesday about Trump’s recent Madison Square Garden rally, which was marked by a series of racist and incendiary remarks by Trump and others, Biden took aim at a particularly bad joke in which comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”

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“They’re good, decent, honorable people,” Biden said of Puerto Ricans. “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done.”

At least, that’s what it sounded like Biden said — and what many observers understood him to say.

Immediately, Republicans jumped on the remarks as a rebuke of nearly half the nation by a sitting president, a gaffe akin to the one Hillary Clinton made during the 2016 race, when she referred to many of Trump’s backers as a “basket of deplorables.”

It was another example, to their minds, of Democrats showing disdain to average Americans, flying in the face of Vice President Kamala Harris’ message of unity and of bringing the nation together in the face of Trump’s routinely divisive rhetoric.

Biden and the White House immediately went into damage control and sought to clarify his remarks.

“Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage — which is the only word I can think of to describe it,” Biden wrote. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation.”

Biden’s team also offered a different transcript that suggested the quote was “supporter’s,” not “supporters,” as in, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s” — which they suggested was a direct rebuke of one supporter in particular: Hinchcliffe.

Harris too tried to tamp down the criticism. She noted that Biden had clarified his remarks, but also distanced herself from them.

“Listen, I think, first of all, he clarified his comments, but let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” she said.

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Harris has tried to walk a fine line with Biden for months, touting his administration’s accomplishments while also saying she would be her own kind of leader. She has tried to cast herself as representing a new generation of leadership — a nod to the fact that she is 60 years old, while Biden is 81 and Trump is 78.

She has also been trying to court Republicans to her camp, particularly in swing states where she and Trump are in extremely tight races and need every vote they can get.

Biden, who has always had a stutter, has clearly lost an additional step in his rhetorical powers in recent years. He exited the presidential race after appearing so befuddled in a June debate against Trump that many in the country began to question his mental acuity and his ability to lead. His stumbling through his remarks about Trump’s supporters are just the latest example of words getting the better of him — despite his swift clarification.

Harris supporters have criticized media coverage of the dustup as out of proportion, especially in light of the fact that Trump routinely uses similarly derogatory language. He recently referred to the U.S. as a whole as “a dumping ground,” saying, “We’re like a garbage can for the world.”