President Joe Biden aimed pointed comments at former President Donald Trump and his supporters over the weekend ahead of Election Day.
While making a final campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Saturday for Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden called Harris’ rival someone “you’d like to smack in the ass” while slamming Trump’s policy goals during the event in Scranton.
“There’s one more thing Trump and his Republican friends want to do. They want to have a giant tax cut for the wealthy,” Biden told members of the local carpenters’ union in his hometown.
He then seemingly referenced Trump’s supporters, continuing, “Now, I know some of you guys are tempted to think it’s macho guys.”
“I tell you what, man, when I was in Scranton, we used to have a little trouble going down the plot once in a while. These are the kind of guys you’d like to smack in the ass,” Biden added, gritting his teeth as the crowd laughed.
Last week, Biden responded to the racist comments made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at an Oct. 27 Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
“In my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent honorable people,” Biden said of Puerto Ricans during a call with the Hispanic advocacy group Voto Latino on Tuesday night. “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters… his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Andrew Bates, a senior deputy press secretary at the White House, said Biden “referred to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage,’” alongside a transcript released by the White House press office.
The transcript rendered the quote with an apostrophe, reading “supporter’s” rather than “supporters,” which aides said indicated Biden was criticizing Hinchcliffe and not the American citizens who support Trump.
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Biden also later personally clarified his comments in a post on X.
“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,” he wrote.
Biden added, “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.”
