Biden faces backlash for calling Trump supporters ‘garbage’

WASHINGTON: United States President Joe Biden made comments on Tuesday criticizing Trump and the comedian speaker at his rally earlier in the week at Madison Square Garden, Tony Hinchcliffe, for the racist jokes he made about Puerto Rico.

TONY HINCHCLIFFE AND TRUMP

Biden reacted to the comments made earlier in the week by stating that “Donald Trump has no character, he doesn’t give a damn about the Latino community,” adding that “he only cares about the billionaire friends he has and accumulating wealth for those at the top.”

“He says immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country, give me a break,” the US president said.

Biden then slammed attendees of the rally, stating that “they’re (Puerto Ricans) good, honourable, decent people, the only garbage I see floating out there are his supporters.” A short pause followed the statement, before Biden added that “his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and its un-American.”

The comments resulted in mass backlash, forcing the white house to release a statement clarifying Biden’s comments. Deputy press secretary Andrew Bates clarified by stating that “the President referred to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage’.”

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The official transcript added an apostrophe to the word supporters, followed by a hyphen connecting the sentence to the next in which Biden discussed the demonization of Latinos.

The White House’s attempts to diminish the backlash was undermined after a White House spokesperson refused to answer a question by Axios’ correspondent Alex Thompson.

After the Biden administration spokesperson requested to go off the record following an inquiry as to whether the president was consulted before releasing the official transcript, Thompson wrote that “Axios declined and the White House did not respond further.”

ELON MUSK

Biden also targeted Elon Musk with a comment he made on Saturday in Pittsburgh, where he accused the billionaire, who has donated over $70 million to help get Donald Trump elected, of working illegally in the US.

“He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law. And he’s talking about all these illegals coming our way?” Biden said, in an attempt to point out the hypocrisy in Musk supporting Trump, whose rhetoric has largely revolved around deporting migrants in the US.

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Musk responded on X, formerly known as Twitter, by stating that he “was in fact allowed to work in the US.”

A report by The Washington Post alleged that Musk was working illegally on a student visa, while attending a graduate program at Stanford University in 1995. The outlet cited company documents and court records, as well as a statement by a former CEO of Musk’s silicon Valley startup, Zip2, stating that investors were worried about the possibility of Musk being deported.

Musk later clarified on X that he transitioned from a J-1 visa, which is used by foreign students pursuing academic training, to an H1-B, a visa for temporary employment for specialty occupations.

However, multiple former business associates and shareholders stated that when creating Zip2, Musk was on a student visa. To qualify for work while on a J-1 visa, Musk would need to have been engaged in a full course of study, which presents an issue, as a Stanford spokeswoman told CNN that despite being accepted into a graduate program at the institution, there was no record of Musk ever enrolling.

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