The White House reportedly canceled the remaining campaign calls that President Joe Biden had listed on his publicly available calendar after he insulted tens of millions of people this week who voted for former President Donald Trump, calling them “garbage.”
The campaign calls were not officially affiliated with the Harris campaign, Fox News reported.
The organizations Biden was set to speak to did not disclose whether the calls happened after they were removed from his calendar.
Biden has no official events with the Harris campaign before Election Day next week.
The move comes after Biden declared Trump supporters “garbage” during a campaign call Tuesday night with a Latino voter outreach group.
“Donald Trump has no character. He doesn’t give a damn about the Latino community,” Biden claimed.
“Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage,” Biden continued, referencing remarks that were made at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City over the weekend by an insult comedian.
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”
Officials in the Biden-Harris White House altered the official transcript of Biden’s remarks at the event as they sought to stave off negative news coverage just days before the election.
The Associated Press reported that the alteration of official government records drew objections from the federal workers who document all of the president’s remarks for historical reference.
Official White House stenographers recorded Biden stating: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
However, Biden-Harris officials altered the quote by adding an apostrophe, changing it to “supporter’s” instead of “supporters.”
The change was made only after the White House press team “conferred with the president,” according to an email obtained by the publication.
Federal officials pushed back, noting that the interference by the White House was “a breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.”
“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” the supervisor wrote. “Our Stenography Office transcript — released to our distro, which includes the National Archives — is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff.”
The supervisor, who is a career White House employee, said that urgency of a transcript’s release was not their concern and that what mattered was that it was authentic and legitimate.
The edit came as the administration tried to contain the fallout from Biden’s remarks during the final days of the presidential race.
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) on Wednesday accused White House staff of “releasing a false transcript” of Biden’s remarks, and said that they were considering opening an investigation into the matter.
“Unsurprising too were the White House’s actions after he said them,” they said in a joint statement. “Instead of apologizing or clarifying President Biden’s words, the White House instead sought to change them (despite them being recorded on video) by releasing a false transcript of his remarks.”
“The move is not only craven, but it also appears to be in violation of federal law, including the Presidential Records Act of 1978,” they added. “White House staff cannot rewrite the words of the President of the United States to be more politically on message. Though President Biden’s relevance continues to diminish, his words continue to matter, even as they become increasingly divisive and erratic.”
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