White House altered record of Biden’s ‘garbage’ remarks
Internal mail says the stenographers who document the president’s remarks objected to the change.
White House press officials altered the official transcript of a call in which President Joe Biden appeared to take a swipe at supporters of Donald Trump, drawing objections from federal workers who document such remarks for posterity, according to two US government officials and an internal email obtained by The Associated Press.
Mr Biden created an uproar with his remarks to Latino activists responding to racist comments at a Trump rally made by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who referred to the US island territory of Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”.
According to a transcript prepared by the official White House stenographers, Mr Biden told the Latino group on a Tuesday evening video call: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his — his demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American”.
The transcript released by the White House press office, rendered the quote with an apostrophe, reading “supporter’s” rather than “supporters”, which aides said pointed to Mr Biden criticising Mr Hinchcliffe, not Americans who are supporting Mr Trump for president.
The change was made after the press office “conferred with the president”, according to an internal email from the head of the stenographers’ office that was obtained by AP.
The authenticity of the email was confirmed by two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The supervisor, in the email, called the press office’s handling of the matter “a breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices”.
“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” the supervisor wrote, adding, “Our Stenography Office transcript — released to our distro, which includes the National Archives — is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff.”
