President Joe Biden has sought to clarify comments that sparked a new row after he was accused of calling Donald Trump’s supporters “nonsense.”

He responded to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe who sparked controversy by calling Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, an “island of trash” during a Trump rally on Sunday.

“The only trash I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden initially said on Tuesday, prompting an angry Republican response.

The White House later released a transcript with an apostrophe, saying the president was referring to Hinchcliffe’s words, not all Trump supporters.

“The only trash I see floating around there is that of (Trump’s) supporters… his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and un-American,” the transcript reads.

Biden himself later addressed his video call with nonprofit Voto Latino, writing about is the only word I can think of to describe it.

“His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I wanted to say. The comments at that meeting do not reflect who we are as a nation.”

But Trump’s supporters have seized on the comments, drawing comparisons to a controversial comment from Hillary Clinton in 2016 during Trump’s first term, when she said half of Trump’s supporters came from a “basket of deplorable people.”

As the war of words escalated, Trump himself suggested that Kamala Harris – his rival for the White House – was waging a “campaign of hate.”

During his campaign, Trump has repeatedly referred to his opponents as “the enemy from within” – rhetoric that Harris described as divisive.

Referring to Biden’s comments, Trump said: “You can’t lead America if you don’t love the American people.”

The Madison Square Garden meeting that Biden refers to – which Hinchcliffe and others took offense with a series of comments – has now been defended by Trump as a “love fest.”

He acknowledged that “someone said some bad things” but said he didn’t think it was “very important.”

He stopped short of issuing an apology demanded by prominent figures from the island itself, which is a US territory. Some Republicans — including from neighborhoods with strong Latino populations — were outraged.

In Philadelphia, in the key state of Pennsylvania, members of the 90,000-strong Puerto Rican population told the BBC they would not forget the joke.

Residents of Puerto Rico – an American island territory in the Caribbean – cannot vote in the presidential elections, but the large diaspora in the US can.

Hinchcliffe himself has defended his material, saying his critics “have no sense of humour”.

Biden’s comments on the furor threatened to overshadow a meeting Tuesday night by Kamala Harris, who is running for the White House as the Democratic nominee after Biden withdrew earlier in the contest.

Harris delivered what her campaign called her “closing argument” in Washington DC – at the site from which Trump spoke shortly before a riot by his supporters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

She urged voters to “turn the page on the drama and conflict” in American politics.

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher provides insight into the race for the White House in his biweekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in Britain can sign up here. Those outside Britain can sign up here.