President Joe Biden made waves in the last week of the presidential campaign. The president really stirred the political storm when he began talking about former President Donald Trump‘s rally. However, many people found it to be an offense spoken by him against former President Donald Trump’s supporters, but his speech came at the expense of a virtual address to help Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign by criticizing the kind of language used by speakers at the Madison Square Garden event staged by Trump. He labeled it “garbage.”
Biden was reacting to a joke by a comedian during the Trump rally, comparing Puerto Rico to a “floating island of garbage.” He was defending Puerto Rican Americans but in a phrase that could not help but recall Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables” remark in 2016.
The White House promptly clarified that Biden was talking about “hateful rhetoric,” not about the supporters of Trump himself. But the conservative media and the Trump campaign held on to the remark for it was seen as some kind of disrespect to a slice of voters. In no time, the story had been defined by the Trump campaign, which claimed Biden’s rhetoric was demeaning to ordinary Americans- including Latinos, Black voters, union workers, and police officers.
As Harris will try to present herself as a uniting figure and position her candidacy against Trump’s divisive speech, the Biden slip threatens to complicate that message. Observers say that the comment has possibly given Trump new life, focusing attention away from his inflammatory rally and letting him frame Democrats as out of touch with working Americans.
That was at a very critical moment in an election where a single small misstep could swing that undecided voter in those swing states. Expect both camps, with stakes now incredibly high, to ride out the fallout from Biden’s mistake, likely into the voting booth.
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