Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president, on Monday riffed on recent comments from President Biden in which he appeared to compare former President Trump’s supporters to garbage, stating that Vice President Harris is “trash.”
“And our message to Kamala Harris is very simple, the citizens of this country, they are not garbage for thinking that you’re doing a bad job,” Vance said while rallying supporters in Atlanta.
“The citizens of this country are not racist for thinking that you ought to close down that damn southern border,” he continued. “The citizens of this country are not garbage for wanting to be able to afford groceries and a nice place to live. But in two days, we are gonna take out the trash in Washington, D.C., and the trash’s name is Kamala Harris.”
Last Tuesday, during a call with Voto Latino, a major advocacy group targeting Latino voters, the president drew criticism when he offered his two cents on a recent racist joke that a comedian made about Puerto Rico during a Trump rally in New York.
The White House had circulated a transcript of Biden’s remarks, reading, “I don’t — I — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that — that I know — or a Puerto Rico, where I’m from, in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people.”
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”
Biden also said that Tuesday in a post on the social platform X that he had “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.”
However, The Associated Press has since reported that White House officials altered the transcript, with a stenographer’s transcript originally referring to “supporters” without the apostrophe.
Vance noted the president’s remarks earlier Monday, stating that Harris’s “boss, just a couple of days ago, said, not just a criticism of Donald Trump or of me, but said that the people who support Donald J. Trump are ‘garbage.’”
Harris later addressed Biden’s comments, saying that “he clarified” them and adding that she is “strongly” against “any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”
The Hill has reached out to the Harris campaign and the White House for comment.
