Evening Report

© AP Photo/Susan Walsh

Harris moves to clean up Biden's 'garbage' gaffe

Vice President Harris was on clean-up duty Wednesday after President Biden stumbled into a gaffe at the worst possible moment for her campaign.

In Biden’s garbled remarks during a Latino get-out-the-vote event on Zoom, the president appeared to call Trump’s supporters “garbage,” a line that was reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 remarks calling half of Trump’s supporters “deplorables.”

• “First of all, he clarified his comments, but let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” Harris told reporters on her way to a rally in North Carolina, one of three swing states she was visiting Wednesday.
  
  
• The White House sought to immediately correct the record Tuesday night, claiming Biden was only referring to the comedian at a Trump rally who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
  
  
• Biden later tweeted his own clarification.

Still, Harris and Democrats do not want the controversy to fester, with every utterance magnified in the final hours before Election Day.

• Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) went on CNN in the moments after Biden’s remarks went viral on social media.
  
  
• “I would never insult the good people of Pennsylvania or any Americans even if they chose to support a candidate that I didn’t support,” he said.

Biden has largely been sidelined by the Harris campaign, underscored by his appearance on a Zoom event as Harris made her big closing argument in front of 75,000 people at the Ellipse near the White House.

• At a speech in New Hampshire last week, Biden said of Trump, “we gotta lock him up,” before correcting himself to say he meant it as a metaphor that Trump should be “politically” locked up.
  
  
• Biden will campaign Friday for Harris in Pennsylvania, where he’ll rally union workers.

GOP ON ATTACK: Republicans are all over Biden's gaffe, which trampled on........

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