US election: Trump exploits Biden’s ‘garbage’ comment to rouse base

NEW YORK: Giving up his tailored jacket for a neon orange trash collector’s vest and his Cadillac Escalade for a garbage truck, Donald Trump is rousing his base by taking on a remark by President Joe Biden likening them to “garbage”.

After the garbage truck event in Milwaukee, Trump continued wearing the trash collector vest appearing in it at a rally there.

He said that it showed what Biden and Democrats thought of them, that they were “garbage”.

The sartorial style was also a symbolic appeal to the working class, a significant part of his base.

Earlier this month, he had put on an apron and fried chips at a McDonald’s restaurant and served at its take-out counter.

Biden had likened Trump’s supporters to “garbage” in the trash-talking war set off by a nasty comedian’s joke at a Trump rally calling Puerto Rico an “island of floating garbage”.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” said Biden.

And that had echoes of Hillary Clinton saying in the 2016 race against Trump that his supporters were “deplorables”, turning off segments of the working class against the Democratic Party, which they consider elitist.

Democrats rushed into damage control mode to douse its fallout.

Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running against Trump in next week’s election, said criticising her boss, “Let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”

Other Democrats piled on, with Representative Jared Golden posting on X, “Any elected official or candidate who calls Americans or America 'garbage' is flat out wrong.”

Biden’s remark was reported on Monday while Harris was holding her massive rally on the Ellipse in Washington, casting a shadow over its media coverage.

Biden took the unusual walking back comment, writing 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.”

“His demonisation 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,” he added.

The White House said that it was a matter of a missing apostrophe that made it offensive to Trump supporters.

It should have been placed in the word, “supporters”, making it a reference to the words in the joke and not to the supporters, his team said.

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in a series of offensive jokes against different minorities had said, “I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

Trump disowned him saying, “I don’t know him; someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is.”

Senator Marco Rubio, a Latino Republican, said on X that “those weren’t Trump’s words”.

“Puerto Rico isn’t garbage, it’s home to fellow American citizens who have made tremendous contributions to our country,” he wrote.

Democrats amplified Hinchcliffe’s dig at Puerto Ricans and Latinos to stop Trump’s inroads into that community – his support among Latinos had increased from 27 per cent in 2020 to 39 per cent now, according to NBC polls.