Since the “Let’s Go, Brandon” incident, the media has been repeatedly accused of reframing news or rewriting words to benefit the President or the Biden-Harris Administration. This week, the White House Press Office and various media outlets like Politico and MSNBC have been ridiculed for denying that President Joe Biden called Trump supporters “garbage.” It has created a weird dissonance as Democratic politicians denounced what the White House and many in the press denied was said. Now, the White House Press office is being criticized from a new quarter for the clean up on aisle three: the Director of White House Stenography, Amy Sands. The White House stenographers objected to the rewriting of the transcript by the Biden White House staff to suggest that the President was condemning Trump’s rhetoric, not his supporters.
The President’s attack on Trump supporters was nothing new. Leaders like Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables,” and Biden himself has described their views as a return of the confederacy and the rise of fascism. Democrats have called the movement a modern form of Nazism and an effort to destroy democracy, round up homosexuals, and create internment camps.
The problem was the timing. As Harris was denouncing Trump for name-calling and insisting that Democrats are bringing the country together (while condemning Trump as a modern version of Hitler), Biden was literally behind her in the White House, calling tens of millions of Trump supporters “garbage.”
Fox News reportedly obtained an email in which the supervisor sounded the alarm on the White House press office’s “breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.” Sands went on to say that
“if there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently. 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…After last night’s process, our team would like to reiterate that rush drafts/excerpts the Stenography Office sends to assist the Press Office are not intended for public distribution or as the final version of the transcript. Please avoid sharing rush drafts/excerpts, which are subject to review and might create confusion among staff, media, and the public while our Stenography Office completes a thorough review process.”
The White House was criticized for adding an apostrophe to the President’s comments to change the meaning of the key line.
After the statement, there was an immediate clean-up effort by Politico White House bureau chief and MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire, who was accused of changing the language by saying that “Biden, in a Zoom call with the organization Voto Latino, said ‘the only garbage’ was the ‘hatred’ of Trump supporters who said such things about American citizens.”
Lemire was widely ridiculed. For many, it sounded like another “Let’s Go Brandon” moment. He later turned to the apostrophe spin: “The full Biden quote from the Zoom tonight, which is being taken out of context.” Accompanying the text is a screenshot of a transcript that has Biden saying: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
The spin would have been more convincing if many of these pundits were not at the same time insisting that a line from a comedian delivered at a Trump event should be attributed to Trump (despite his later condemnation of any such view). It would also be more credible if Biden had not spent much of the last four years portraying the Trump movement as a new confederacy (before it was reframed as the new Third Reich).
When asked about the internal objections, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates only repeated the prior statement: “The President confirmed in his tweet on Tuesday evening that he was addressing the hateful rhetoric from the comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. That was reflected in the transcript.”
However, Fox noted that it remains “unclear … whether the transcript the White House cites is the one that was altered and released to the press or the final transcript that was sent to the National Archives.”
Other reporters now admit that Biden said what he said but describe it, as did CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, as “a gaffe by President Biden where he, in his explanation, inadvertently called Trump supporters garbage.” The “inadvertent gaffe” ignores years of portraying Trump supporters as seeking to return the United States to the Jim Crowe period or pursuing a neo-Nazi future.
While various Democratic politicians have denounced Biden’s statements and Harris has said that she strongly disagrees with them, diehards like MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell mocked those who were critical as “some of the worst” or just ungrammatical journalists:
“To do so, they had to refuse to listen to the actual sentence Joe Biden spoke. They had to refuse to look at the written words of that sentence. They had to refuse to understand English grammar. They had to refuse to understand what a singular possessive is. They had to refuse to understand what apostrophe ‘s’ means. They had to refuse to remember what they learned in elementary school about the English language.”
It appears that the non-partisan, career stenographers who recorded the interview contemporaneously are also on that “worst” list of ungrammatical morons.
The mainstream media is now dismissing the entire matter as just the placement of an apostrophe. Yet, many of these same voices were supporting a full-fledged investigation into the transcript of the Ukraine call during the Trump Administration over “the use of ellipses.”
I was critical of that call and supported calls for an accurate transcript, particularly on such a weighty issue. However, back then, the accuracy of such transcripts was accepted as of paramount importance. Whether it is a matter of foreign or domestic policy (or an apostrophe or ellipses), the public should be confident on the accuracy of White House transcripts, as stressed by Sands in her internal objections to the White House Press Office.
One of those objecting to the use of the ellipses was Lawrence O’Donnell.
It appears that one person’s punctuation is another person’s punch line.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
I wonder does the new and improved hypostrophized version of Bidens’s ‘garbauge ’ transcript NOW become a SEPARATE entry and subject to the federal records retention act?
Can it be foia’d under ‘oops’?
How embarrassing for our country. Biden mumbled and bumbled through a speech today and some moron actually thought it would be a good idea if he tried to pin the medal onto the recipient. That was a yuuuge FAIL. So pathetic.
This was the first time i noticed his head shaking as he walked. The man has Parkinsons and possibly vascular dementia and we are going to find out someday that Kamala and Jill have been hiding it.
“Dumpster Fire: This Comment Section”
Go to older comments. The trolls get up later
The Washington Post Live had a discussion panel with Hugh Hewitt (I don’t think he is a Trump fan). In their usual fashion, the discussion limited itself to only half of the rhetoric. The rhetoric was so unfair towards Trump that Hugh Hewitt corrected the record and called the discussion an advertisement rather than a discussion of events. He then walked out and quit the Post.
“This is the most unfair election ad I’ve ever been a part of,”
Hewitt called it right. The Washington Post is an ad for Kamala and distorts the truth in Kamala’s favor.
After the moderator and other panelists tried to slide in negatively about Trump complaining of election inadequacies, Hewitt said:
“Bucks County was reversed by the court and instructed to open up extra days because they violated the law and told people to go home,” he said, referring to voters in line being turned away early.
“We are news people, even though we have opinions, and we have to report the whole story if we bring up part of the story. So, yes, he’s upset about Bucks County, but he was right and he won in court. That’s the story,”
Freedom of the press is absolute and a very good thing.
Competition in the free press markets of the private sector is the “duty” of patriotic Americans.
There is none.
* Yes, Hewitt walked out. Absolutely don’t allow it.
So it is perfectly fine for Trump to call our country a garbage can, but House Republicans feel the need to investigate the use of an apostrophe.
Sounds about right for the priorities of this MAGA cult.
Are you really that intellectually challenged? Trump criticized the Biden-Harris open border policy by saying the rest of the world was dumping its criminals into our country as if it was a garbage can. Biden, by contrast, said half the American people were garbage, then tried to deny he said that by dishonesty inserting an apostrophe to alter the obvious meaning of what he said. You, sir, are the one in a cult – the cult of reality-denial.
No no no, once again you distort Trump’s words! He said, “It has all the indications of being a garbage can”, please get it right next time.
Trump;s statement is an observation of FACT – Biden/Harris have turned this country into a dumping ground for the dregs of other countries.
That is not an insult to the american people., It is a well deserved insult to their left wing nut leaders.
There would be no need to “Make America Great Again” is those of you on the left had not F#$Ked it up.
As you have done all over the world when you gain power.
This is not the investigation of the use of an appostrophe.
It is an effort by our political leaders to alter the historical records of the united states – to LIE to the ntional archives.,
And this story broke because Carreer civil servants all DEMOCRATS complained.
Quit treating 1984 as a HOWTO manual and we will all get along much better
Speaking of cults and just to keep things clear, please state the time, the date, the place, the event and the exact words of the exact quote in it’s entire context Donald Trump used when he called The United States of America “a garbage can.” Links to unaltered, non AI created video would be helpful too.
Thank you.
There’s an element Republicans may be overlooking in this election. A record number of Republicans are voting by mail and it seems more Republicans than usual are voting this time. That doesn’t mean all will vote for Trump. There are also the moderates to consider. There could be a record number of Republicans voting against Trump by voting for Harris.
Maybe that’s why there’s an air of confidence among MAGA fans. Republican= Trump. There may very well be a lot of Republicans voting for Harris. Especially women.
Republican women will vote on economy, crime in the streets, murdered citizens, unsecured border, porn available in school libraries, drag queen story hour, women’s sports, family, marriage, safety, and other…
“All you need is faith, trust, and a little bit of pixie dust.”
-Tinkerbell (D-California)
Experts are predicting Trump to get 345 EC votes. Sorry, dreamer.
No Repulicans are voting for Harris.
And pigs could fly.
I would note that while there are “record” numbers of republicans voting by mail – those numbers are still tiny.
it is still true that very few republicans trust voting by mail.
What has actually been occuring is record number of republicans are voting early and/or voting absentee.
They are going to the courthouse and voting – much as they would if they went to the polls.
The could be voting for Harris, They could be voting for Kennedy, they could be voting libertarian.
And likly a tiny portion are. But it is incredibly likely they are voting for Trump.
More problematic for democrats is that a substantial portion of them are new or infrequent voters.
Worse still democrat mailin voting is DOWN, Democrat early voting is DOWN.
It is difficult to KNOW what actually will happen. The polls have been wrong in all the presidential elections and most of themid terms in the past 20 years. They have been universally way off – always favoring democrats.
This COULD be the year the polls get it right – and Trump will eak out a narrow popular vote win and a large EC win.
Or it COULD be the first time the polls significantly underestimate democrat support.
Or it COULD be just like past presidential elections with the polls off atleast 4% in favor of Democrats – in which case there will be a Trump landslide.
I do not know what will happen – but the betting markets have Trump up 20pts
And the stock and bond markets have not only called it for Trump, but they are predicting a “sweep election” – where republicans take everything.
Will that happen ?
In a few days we find out.
But what we can KNOW for certain is that no matter how people vote, They do NOT want the Biden/Harris nonsense they have now.
Harris is running on a platform of Trump is a fascist NAZI.
While that is a lie, if she persuades people to vote for her as the lessor evil.
She has NOT persuaded anyone to vote FOR her as a positive good.
If by some miracle she winds – she has ZERO mandate do do anything.
Except NOT be a NAZI and a Facist.
“The “inadvertent gaffe” ignores years of portraying Trump supporters as seeking to return the United States to the Jim Crowe period or pursuing a neo-Nazi future.”
The other explanation ignores the timing of the use of the term “garbage”, coming only days after a comedian had used the very same term at the MSG rally. What a spectacle your country has become that an apostrophe needs to be the source of a formal investigation but a presidential candidate can literally suggest that a former congresswoman should face a firing squad with impunity. Would have thought a respected law professor could stay above the fray.
“a presidential candidate can literally suggest that a former congresswoman should face a firing squad with impunity.”
A certifiable lie. https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/11/01/donald-trump-did-not-call-for-the-assassination-of-a-cheney-but-one-of-harriss-celebrity-endorsers-did/
No one is looking to return to Jim Crow – which was DEMOCRATS.
Trump’s platfor is pretty clear.
No men in womens sports,
Secure borders,
an end to illegal immigration.
An end to these stupid wars.
an end to government F#$King up the economy.
Restoring Jim Crow is not on the list
Your delusional.
Has the National Archive weighed in yet? What is the criteria? What the President actually said or the Tran-scripted missive? Or the actual wire-recording (Video or Audio recording)? None the less, the archive as zealous as it chooses to be should act to preserve the actual spoken missive.
You chucklemonkeys don’t seem to realize that this election was decided on June 24, 2022, the day that the Dobbs decision was announced.
Harris wins in historic landslide with more than 340 electoral college votes.
I understand why you posted that anonymously.
put your name and your money on it, spastic
I do not think ANY source is predicting that. Yougov just predicted a Harris 292-242 victory. With Harris holding the blue wall, and Nevada, and picking up NC. That is the MOST EXTREME proHarris predication I have seen.
And frankly I think Yougov is smoking wacky weed.
Many sources are reporting that – though it will be close – Trump will win Nevada – because he already has the lead, and democrats can not catch up.
Trump only loses NC if voters in West NC can not manage to vote – if they do – they are incredibly pissed.
The odds of Harris winning EVERY “blue wall” state is very near zero.
This is not 2020, and though there will still be massive democrat ballot harvesting – aka FRAUD, we already KNOW it will not and can not be even half the scale it was in 2020.
There is strong evidence right now that first Trump will do better with blacks than any republican in 60 years,
and 2nd that Black Turnout is going to be way down. Surprisingly blacks – men and women are NOT big on Harris.
Trump will get a larger share of hispanics than any prior republican.
The big question is Women – particularly suburban woman. On one hand – Trump is doing horribly with single white women.
But he is actually narrowly winning married women.
MAGA heads exploding over Biden’s garbage comment. Love it. MAGA is Biden’s b*tch.
I heard a juicy rumor yesterday. I heard that a secret envoy was sent to Russia by the Biden administration to learn Putin’s secret ways to twist the narrative with the help of the Main Stream Media. It appears that they’ve applied the lessons that they learned on the trip in a conscientious and professional manner. The word on the street is that their next trip will be to China to gain more insight. Might as well learn from the best.
And they confuse spoliation with spoilstion. Look it up.
“Spoilation”. My iPad hates me.
It’s easier than that. Just make a list of what the opponent values most and say the reverse.