While ABC’s Good Morning America was off denying reality Wednesday that President Biden’s comment referring to Trump “supporters” as “garbage,” CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today were pained to admit he’s “undermin[ing]” and “drawing attention away from Kamala Harris’s closing message” by “courting controversy” with an “unforced error.”
CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil was on it in the Eye Opener:
See, news media, it's not that hard.@CBSMornings co-host @TonyDokoupil: "President Biden makes comments about Trump supporters, calling them 'garbage' and drawing attention away from Kamala Harris's closing message." pic.twitter.com/gsI49ZXwZI
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 30, 2024
After co-host Nate Burleson cued her up by lamenting “Biden said something that could undermine her message,” chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes first cheered the Harris rally’s “estimated 75,000 people crowded onto the Ellipse and down the National Mall...as Harris sought to draw a sharp contrast in these closing days between her vision and Donald Trump’s.”
“Standing before a sea of supporters, Vice President Kamala Harris painted a dark picture of what a second Trump term would look like,” she added.
Cordes continued to relitigate the Harris campaign as based on January 6, but eventually made the pivot to Biden (click “expand”):
CORDES: But even as she was stressing unity —
HARRIS: I pledge to be a president for all Americans.
CORDES: — President Biden was courting controversy with his reaction to this insulting comment made by a comedian at Trump’s Sunday rally.
TOM HINCHCLIFFE: I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yes, I think it’s called Puerto Rico.
CORDES: Speaking virtually to Latino voters, Biden said this:
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Just the other day a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. Well, let me tell you something, I don’t — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that I know, or Puerto Rico where I’m — in my home state of Delaware. They’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters, his — his — his demonization is seen as unconscionable, and it’s un-American.
CORDES: President Biden later tweeted to clarify that he was not talking about all Trump supporters as garbage, that he was only referring to the comedian’s rhetoric as garbage. Adding, “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say.” But this was certainly not the distraction the Harris campaign needed as she heads into this very carefully orchestrated final stretch of the campaign[.]
Dokoupil reacted with a quip of his own: “No, [Democrats] don’t want to be in the realm of ‘meant to say.’”
Tossing to correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns, Dokoupil added “[f]ormer President Donald Trump and other Republicans were, of course, quick to jump on those comments from President Biden as Trump’s campaign sought to pivot away from the controversy over the racist remarks at his mega rally on Sunday in New York.”
Huey-Burns then shared that, unsurprisingly, “[t]he Trump campaign is already capitalizing and fundraising off those comments from President Biden, hoping to shift the focus from their own controversy.”
“The former President has yet to condemn the racist remarks by a comedian at his Madison Square Garden rally and called the event a lovefest,” she said at one point.
CBS Mornings Plus co-host Adriana Diaz admitted this was the White House “in total damage control,” especially considering the discussion is “whether there was an apostrophe-S, his supporter’s garbage that it was, you know, or supporters plural as garbage.”
Longtime CBS analyst/correspondent/host John Dickerson provided the counter to the previous coverage, implying this shouldn’t matter and that Republicans let Biden off the hook because they shouldn’t “get in an insult comparing contest.”
Dokoupil countered it’s debatable whether Hinchcliffe’s comments matter either, but Dickerson chose to pivot back to more implicit talk (click “expand”):
CBS's John Dickerson says "it bears repeating" to voters that they remember January 6, Trump being a "fascist," and Trump wanting to jail people.
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 30, 2024
In turn, "gaffes at the end of a campaign" don't matter as much as they would in a normal election. pic.twitter.com/DmRpuhauSo
Over on NBC, co-host Savannah Guthrie said in a tease that Biden had “caus[ed] new drama as [Harris] spoke,” sending the administration into “damage control, even releasing a revised transcript, but Trump and Republicans pounce[.]”
Setting up chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander, Guthrie described Biden’s smear of tens of millions of Americans as a comment “making headlines.”
Alexander, like CBS’s Cordes, first gave Harris some love by gushing over her crowd size then lamented that Biden’s “unforced error...is threatening to undercut part of her message.”
Once he gave viewers a few pieces of kibble from Harris’s speech, Alexander said Biden “potentially hand[ed] her opponent fresh fodder” and fretted Trump was “quick to pounce, responding mid-rally, comparing the comments to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 denounceable of Trump’s supporters as deplorable.”
Alexander continued on with the White House’s apostrophe excuse and referenced Biden’s X post, eventually ending back with Guthrie and remarking “top Democrats — they are distancing themselves” from Biden.
Alexander stood out as the lone individual on any of the “Big Three” to note this was the second time in as many weeks Biden drew bad headlines for the Democrats with his declaration Trump needed to be locked up.
In the second hour, Trump campaign correspondent Garrett Haake aired his own dismay (click “expand”):
HAAKE: With less than a week to go, last night suitably, a major moment in this campaign. Kamala Harris holding that massive rally on the Ellipse. Quite possibly the biggest event for either candidate all campaign long in which she laid out her closing argument and vowed to be a president for all Americans and offering a chance to turn the page to a new generation of leadership. But that message undercut at least in part by the current President who, on a zoom call with a Latino group, said this about that racist joke from the comedian at Trump’s rally on Sunday.
BIDEN: The only garbage I see floating out there are his supporters — his — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it’s un-American.
HAAKE: The President later posting on social media that he was referring to the rhetoric of the comedian as garbage, not talking about Trump supporters. That did not stop Donald Trump from seizing on that comment mid-rally here in Pennsylvania, arguing that if Biden thinks his supporters are garbage, what is that saying about essentially half the country? The Trump campaign now using this to raise money and as a rallying cry for their supporters in the final week of this campaign[.]
To see the relevant transcripts from October 30, click here (for CBS) and here (for NBC).
