Joe Biden is no longer qualified to speak in public. That makes him a poor surrogate for the Kamala Harris campaign, but he’s also the president, and therefore a very prominent surrogate for the Democratic nominee.
That created a problem for Harris on Tuesday night when Biden came out to criticize Trump’s dehumanizing rhetoric at a recent rally and unleashed a term that may or may not dehumanize all Trump supporters as “garbage.”
So have conservatives expressed their collective horror The spectacle of the US president insulting Americans whose only sin was to disagree with him politically. But even if one were to claim that Republicans’ tendentious reading of Biden is correct, their professed outrage is not merely hypocritical but misleadingly misguided.
At worst, the president momentarily insulted conservative voters before disavowing that sentiment in his next breath. While in office, meanwhile, Biden has poured federal resources into heavily Republican parts of the country. Trump, by contrast, is unapologetically progressive and has reportedly derided immigrants as “enemies” and “insects” and tried to cut off disaster aid. democratic the castle.
There’s a candidate in the 2024 race who views a wide swath of the American public as less than human, and it’s not Kamala Harris. Outrage over Biden’s isolated comments obscures this reality.
Trump dehumanizes his political opponents without apology or condescension. Biden doesn’t.
On Sunday, at a rally for Trump at Madison Square Garden, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” During a video call with Latino supporters Tuesday night, Biden said of the incident:
And just the other day, this is a speaker [Trump’s] Raleigh called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage’. Well, let me tell you something. I don’t know — I — I don’t know a Puerto Rican — that I know — or a Puerto Rican, where I’m — in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, respectable people.
The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of Latinos is undesirable, and it’s un-American. It’s the complete opposite of what we’ve done.
At least that’s the official White House transcript of the comments. Republicans argue that Biden actually It was said, “The garbage I see floating is his [i.e., Trump’s] supporter” In other words, Biden says he’s calling Hinchcliffe’s trash in Puerto Rico trash, while Republicans say he’s calling all Trump supporters trash.
It is impossible to distinguish “supporters” from “supporters” by ear. So, it’s not known for sure what Biden’s intentions were the moment those words escaped his lips. The surrounding context, however, undercuts the GOP’s explanation. Shortly after uttering his controversial statement, the president said the following:
Now, Trump has tried to divide the country along lines of race, ethnicity, harm, to take their eyes off what horrible things he has done and will do. But Kamala Harris fought for all Americans and will be president of all America.
It’s possible that Biden wanted to 1) deride all Trump supporters as “garbage” and then 2) immediately emphasize Harris’ promise to fight for human trash. But that strikes me as unlikely, especially since the president has never said anything like that before in his half-century of public life.
Whatever Biden’s intentions, however, it’s undeniable that his subsequent sentences belied the idea that Republican voters are “garbage” whose interests should be ignored. And after his event was over, Biden emphasized that his intention was only to describe Hinchcliffe’s speech as “rubbish”.
Trump, meanwhile, is unequivocal in his belief that Democrats form “The Enemy From Within” which must be defeated.
Last weekend on Fox News, Howard Kurtz told Trump that “enemy from within” is “a very ominous phrase, if you’re talking about other Americans.”
“I think that’s right,” Trump replied.
The Republican nominee also suggested that these enemies may have some “Managed” by the military” likened his political opponents to “insects” and claimed that undocumented immigrants “Poisonous in the blood of our country.”
This is how Trump described America last week “A Garbage Can for the World,” Argues that other countries deposit their human waste in the United States through immigration.
Notably, Trump’s demonization of immigrants is not limited to those who lack legal status or even citizenship. He baselessly accused legal US residents from Haiti of eating people’s pets He promised to deport them. And he described American citizens who came to this country through the diversity visa lottery as “terrible“and”the worst“
Trump didn’t feel compelled to deny any of those statements, or to reassure the country that he wanted to fight for every American. On the contrary, he freely commits Directive powers of the federal government Against his political opponents and millions of US residents whose presence in this country he hates.
Biden’s rhetoric toward Republican voters bears little resemblance to Trump’s toward Democrats and immigrants. And a similar gap is seen when one examines the actual tenure of each president.
Trump doesn’t just compare Americans to garbage — he tries to treat them like them
During his time in office, Trump clearly tried to help Americans who voted for him and reject those who dared to oppose him, multiple administration officials said. Politico’s E&E News.
Trump as deadly wildfires rage in California Initially rejected According to Mark Harvey, his administration’s senior director for resiliency policy at the National Security Council, the state voted overwhelmingly for Democrats to approve disaster aid. Harvey said that Trump only changed his opinion after polling totals showed that Orange County, Iowa, had more Trump supporters.
Olivia Troy and Kevin Carroll, a former homeland security official in the Trump administration, both backed up Harvey’s story.
“Trump absolutely did not want to give aid to California or Puerto Rico purely for partisan politics — because they didn’t vote for him,” Carroll said. The Guardian Carroll said earlier this month that his former boss, then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, had “twisted Trump’s arm” to release federal funding to those areas after the wildfires and Hurricane Maria, respectively.
Trump has also withheld millions Fire assistance from Washington in September 2020 because the state’s governor criticized him, and the aid was not finally approved until after Biden took office.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ memoir makes these claims more credible. In 2019, after Hurricane Michael devastated the Florida Panhandle, DeSantis ask Then-President Trump ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to pay 100 percent of the state’s recovery costs instead of the customary 75 percent.
According to DeSantis’ book, Trump replied, “They love me in the Panhandle. I must have won 90 percent of the vote there. huge crowd What do they need?”
Trump ordered FEMA to pay 100 percent of Florida’s recovery costs. And yet, just two months ago, he threatened to veto legislation that would have extended the same courtesy to Puerto Rico. And his administration held back $20 billion Hurricane relief from the island for a long time, while Trump known Kelly and then-Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney that he did not want “a single dollar going to Puerto Rico.”
The Biden administration has shown no comparable bias. In contrast, its response to Hurricane Helen—which devastated many conservative communities on the East Coast—achieved Republican officials praised.
Meanwhile, Biden’s signature law — the Inflation Reduction Act — actually happened Red states indicate disproportionate funding. And Biden has also pointed to substantial federal funding Improve infrastructure In conservative-leaning rural areas.
Trump supporters who take umbrage at Biden’s words are guilty of more than hypocrisy
In short, a presidential candidate associated with a man who once referred to Republican voters as trash — before promptly rejecting the notion, and dutifully advancing the interests of conservative constituencies during his tenure as president. That candidate himself, meanwhile, said, “I strongly disagree with any criticism based on who people vote for” and “I believe that what I do is to represent all people, whether they support me or not. “
Another presidential candidate has personally likened large swathes of the American public to “insects” and “garbage” — repeatedly and unapologetically — after trying to cut off federal aid for wildfire victims and vowing to sue his political opponents. He gets the chance.
Any public official who condemns Harris for inciting the dehumanization of ordinary Americans is guilty not of mere hypocrisy, but of misleading voters on an issue of vital importance: how presidential hopefuls will — and will not — treat their least favorite segment of the American public like trash. .
