Echoes of ‘deplorables’ as Joe Biden ruins Kamala Harris’s big night with ‘garbage’ quip
Kamala Harris has urged Americans to turn the page on an era of fear and division, but her closing message was disrupted by Joe Biden who appeared to call Donald Trump’s supporters ‘garbage’.
Drawing a crowd of up to 75,000 people in the shadow of the White House, Kamala Harris used her closing pre-election message to warn Americans against voting for a “petty tyrant” while promising to “turn the page” on an era of fear and division.
Yet it was Joe Biden that Republicans made the target, with Donald Trump accusing the US President of calling his supporters “garbage” and Ms Harris of “comparing her political opponents to the most evil mass murderers in history”.
Taking to the stage at the Ellipse in Washington DC – the same place where Mr Trump addressed his supporters on January 6, 2021, before they marched on the Capitol Building – Ms Harris sold herself as a leader who could heal a fractured nation and cast her rival as representing a return to tyranny.
“He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob … to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election,” she said.
But her pledge to “always listen to you, even if you don’t vote for me” before a sea of people in the heart of American democracy was undercut by confusion over the comments made by Mr Biden.
In a damning turn of phrase, the President undermined Ms Harris’s carefully crafted speech by appearing to disparage Mr Trump’s supporters in a video call with Latino voters – handing a political gift to the Republican campaign just one week out from the November 5 election which is still too close to call.
Responding to Mr Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday (Monday AEDT) when comedian Tony Hinchcliffe likened Puerto Rico to a “floating pile of garbage”, Mr Biden appeared to take aim at Americans who were voting for Mr Trump.
Mr Biden said “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters”, adding that the former president’s “demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable and un-American”.
The unwelcome intervention exposed the widening political distance between Mr Biden and his Vice-President over the course of the campaign, with Ms Harris often at pains to say that her presidency would be different to Mr Biden’s.
The Trump campaign swiftly released a statement, declaring that the former president was “backed by Latinos, black voters, union workers, angel mums, law enforcement officers, border patrol agents, and Americans of all faiths”.
“Harris, Walz, and Biden have labelled these great Americans as fascists, Nazis, and now, garbage,” the statement said.
“There’s no way to spin it: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t just hate President Trump, they despise the tens of millions of Americans who support him.
“Kamala does not deserve four more years.”
The White House also sought to clarify the comments, releasing a transcript suggesting the president had said “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s” – a reference to Hinchcliffe’s demonisation of Latinos as being garbage.
In a statement, the White House said Mr Biden was referring to Mr Trump’s rhetoric, not to his supporters. “The President referred to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage’,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates.
It made no difference, with the Republican machine kicking into gear given the parallels with former Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s statement in 2016 that Mr Trump’s supporters fit into a “basket of deplorables” – a comment she later acknowledged was a factor in her defeat.
Mr Trump posted on social media that “now, on top of everything, Joe Biden calls our supporters ‘garbage’. You can’t lead America if you don’t love the American people.”
JD Vance, Mr Trump’s running mate, said “Kamala Harris and her boss Joe Biden are attacking half of the country”.
Both sides are hoping to seize any possible advantage, with polls pointing to an ever tightening race. The Vice-President was up two to three percentage points in several polls in Michigan, but the CBS News/YouGov poll showed a tied race in the ‘tipping point’ state of Pennsylvania.
Ms Harris told Americans it would “probably be the most important vote you ever cast” and that she would “work everyday to build consensus and reach compromise to get things done”.
Saying the American experiment is at risk, Ms Harris declared that nearly 250 years ago the nation was born when “we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant”.
“Across the generations, Americans have preserved that freedom, expanded it and, in so doing, proved to the world that a government of, by and for the people is strong and can endure,” she said.
Ms Harris said Americans over generations “did not struggle, sacrifice and lay down their lives only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms … they didn’t do that only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant.”
The United States of America was not a “vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators” but was the embodiment of the “greatest idea humanity ever devised”.
Ms Harris said America was “a nation big enough to encompass all our dreams, strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure between us and fearless enough to imagine a future of possibilities”.
She said that, in one week’s time, Americans had the power to “turn the page” and start writing the “next chapter in the most extraordinary story every told”.
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