From 'garbage' to 'lock him up,' Biden's gaffes undercut Harris in campaign's final days

Since dropping out of the 2024 race, President Biden has sought to adapt to a new role of finishing out his term while trying to avoid hurting Vice President Kamala Harris’s chances of defeating Donald Trump in November.

Over the past week, however, Biden has had trouble living up to that assignment to “Do no harm.”

‘Garbage’

On Tuesday, Harris delivered her closing argument speech before 75,000 people gathered at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., reaching out to undecided voters and vowing "to be a president for all Americans," while also warning that Trump is "unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance."

But as the speech concluded, video clips were being circulated on social media of what appeared to be Biden calling Trump’s supporters “garbage” in a video call with a Latino voter registration group. That negative interpretation, however, rests on the view that Biden said “supporters” rather than “supporter's” when he said, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his [supporters/supporter's].”

Biden had been referring to the off-color joke made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe during Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday: “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.”

Hinchcliffe's remark sparked outrage and could impact the results in states where people of Puerto Rican descent make up a significant percentage of the electorate. But to many voters, Biden's words seemed to echo Hillary Clinton's famous broad-brush description of Trump supporters as a "basket of deplorables." With the election in a dead heat as the campaign heads into its final days, such insults can help motivate voters, and Biden quickly went into damage-control mode.

"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," Biden said in a message posted to social media Tuesday night. "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."

On Wednesday, as Trump’s supporters continued to insist that Biden had been going after them as a group, rather than simply calling out Hinchcliffe, Harris offered her own statement.

“Let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” Harris told reporters.

‘Lock him up’

The controversy over Biden’s “garbage” quip came one week after the president made headlines when talking about Trump to a group of Democrats in New Hampshire.

Referencing the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity and the powers it might give Trump if he is reelected, Biden told his audience, “I know this sounds bizarre — it sounds like if I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up. We gotta lock him up. Politically lock him up. Lock him out. That’s what we have to do.”

The Trump campaign wasted no time in criticizing Biden and Harris for what Trump later described as proof of “election interference.”

“Joe Biden just admitted the truth: He and Kamala’s plan all along has been to politically persecute their opponent President Trump because they can’t beat him fair and square,” Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, said in a statement Tuesday. “The Harris-Biden Admin is the real threat to democracy. We call on Kamala Harris to condemn Joe Biden’s disgraceful remark.”

Biden has largely refrained from discussing the legal cases brought against Trump, and Harris, a former prosecutor-turned-politician, often shuts down “Lock him up!” chants when they erupt at her campaign rallies by telling her audience, “The courts are gonna handle that. We’re going to beat him in November.”

But with Biden continuing to step on her message to voters — that she will “work every day to reach consensus and reach compromise” — that pledge is being put to an even greater test.