The White House altered the official transcript of a call President Biden made with Latino supporters in which he appeared to call Trump supporters “trash,” according to Associated Press reporting.
The comments were made in response to a joke Tony Hinchcliffe made at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage.”
According to the official transcript prepared by White House stenographers, Biden said on Tuesday’s call: “The only trash I see floating around is his supporters, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and un-American.”
However, the transcript released by the White House press office altered the word supporters. It said “supporters” instead of “supporters” in the plural.
This change, according to his aides, corrects Biden’s statement to imply that he was criticizing only Hinchcliffe, not the millions of Americans who voted for Trump. The Associated Press reported.
The White House reportedly altered the official transcript of a call President Biden made with Latino supporters in which he appeared to call Trump supporters “trash.”
The change to the transcript was made after the press office “conferred with the president,” according to an internal email from the head of the stenographer’s office.
Two anonymous government officials confirmed that the email was real.
The stenographer’s office supervisor wrote in the email that the press office violated proper protocol and ruined the “integrity of the transcript.”
“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to retain the transcript but cannot independently edit it,” the supervisor wrote. “Our Shorthand Office transcript, published in our distribution, which includes the National Archives, is now different from the version edited and published to the public by Press Office staff.”
