CNN
—

Joe Biden had been largely an afterthought a week before the election, when he had once hoped to win a second term.

Not anymore.

The president inadvertently injected himself into the home stretch of the campaign and may have provided a major boost to his former rival, ex-President Donald Trump, who is struggling to quell the furor over his bigotry-filled rally at Madison Square Garden earlier this week .

Biden was talking about Puerto Rico, which was vilified by a comedian at Trump’s event on Sunday night as a “floating island of trash.” But his clumsy defense of the self-governing US territory – and the crucial swing voters in the US mainland diaspora – sparked a new political firestorm and distracted from Vice Kamala President Harris’s big closing speech against the backdrop of White House Tuesday evening. .

“And recently, a speaker at his meeting called Puerto Rico ‘a floating island of trash.’ Well, let me tell you something… I don’t know the Puerto Ricans I know… or Puerto Rico where I am – in my home state of Delaware – they are good, decent, honorable people,” Biden said during a virtual session. comments in a Voto Latino get-out-the-vote call intended to help Harris.

“The only trash I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said, pausing before continuing. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and un-American.”

The White House quickly sought to clarify the president’s comments, with spokesman Andrew Bates saying he was referring to the “hateful rhetoric” at the New York meeting, and not the former president’s supporters. He said Biden actually said this: “The only trash I see floating out there is from his supporters — from him — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it is un-American.”

And in a further sign that the White House recognizes the potential political fallout from the episode, Biden himself took to social media to address it.

“Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by the Trump supporter at his rally at Madison Square Garden as nonsense – and that’s 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,” Biden wrote on X.

But perhaps the damage has already been done.

Biden’s comment immediately drew comparisons to then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s 2016 comment that half of Trump’s supporters should be put “in the basket of deplorables” because of their “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic ” views. Her comments became a rallying cry for Trump and the conservative media and remain a badge of honor for Trump fans who view East Coast Democratic elites as condescending and contemptuous of their way of life.

And Trump’s campaign seized on Biden’s comments to try to create the same kind of momentum, claiming that the ex-president is supported by “Latinos, Black voters, union workers, angel mothers, law enforcement officers, border patrol agents and Americans of all people.” beliefs,” while his opponents “have labeled these great Americans as fascists, Nazis and now trash.” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt added: “There’s no way to get it wrong: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris not only hate President Trump, they despise the tens of millions of Americans who support him.”

No one can say how this latest twist in a turbulent campaign will affect the end result. But in the intense heat of the final week of the stalled presidential campaign, when even a few inaccurate words can have significant political consequences, it may not matter what Biden actually meant. Perception is everything.

Just as Harris’ team looked to keep the focus on Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, which capitalized on her contrasting message on Tuesday night, the president handed Harris a political mess. It is now almost certain that she will be asked whether she also views Trump’s supporters as “garbage”. Her answer will only prolong the story. The former president is also likely to use the gaffe to argue that Democrats view working Americans at home with disdain.

A fundraising email from Trump Tuesday night read: “FIRST, Hillary called you a DEPLORABLE! THEN they called you a FASCIST! And just moments ago Kamala’s boss Biden called you GARBAGE!’

His campaign has already tried to spin the fallout from claims that Trump pined for the kind of generals who served Adolf Hitler into an argument that Harris believes all his supporters are Nazis.

Biden’s “garbage” comment could also provide an opening for Trump to finally talk his way out of the backlash against Puerto Rico sparked by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at the New York rally. “He probably shouldn’t have been there,” Trump said of the comedian in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that aired Tuesday night. His earlier comments that the event was “an absolute lovefest” had done nothing to defuse the controversy.

More broadly, a comment from Biden, who will be portrayed by pro-Trump media as disparaging the ex-president’s supporters, came just as Harris is trying to come across as a unifying figure to rally Republicans to to win over those who are dissatisfied with Trump’s extremism but are not yet ready to take the plunge and vote for a Democrat.

“Here is my promise to you,” Harris said Tuesday evening at a rally at the Ellipse in Washington, the site where Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell” before the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “I promise that I will look for common ground and common sense solutions to make your lives better.”

The vice president continued: “For people who disagree with me, unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe that people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I give them a place at the table.”

Gretchen Carlson says Harris’ closing speech was the “antithesis of division.”

Clinton and Obama warned against humiliating Trump supporters

Whatever Biden meant, his comments fly in the face of exhortations to Democrats from two other presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who implored activists at the Democratic National Convention to take the political fight to Trump but not disrespect his voters.

“Meet people where they are. “I urge you not to humiliate them… treat them with respect, just as you would have them treat you,” Clinton said, urging delegates to carefully present the vice president’s case to advocate with their neighbors.

Obama has addressed the risk that name-calling can lead available voters to conclude that all politicians are the same. “A sense of mutual respect must be part of our message. Our politics today have become so polarized that all of us, across the political spectrum, seem so quick to assume the worst in others unless they agree with us on every single issue,” he said. “We’re starting to think the only way to win is to curse and shame and shout at the other side. And after a while, ordinary people drop out or don’t bother to vote at all.”

Democrats are likely to view a blurb about a few ill-chosen words from the president, whether intended or not, as a triviality at a time when Harris is warning that the country could elect a man next week who will have them as president on Tuesday labeled. “a little tyrant.”

And verbal missteps by Biden and other Democrats pale in comparison to the often vulgar rhetoric and unhinged commentary of the Republican candidate, who recently made a crude comment about the anatomy of the late pro-golf legend Arnold Palmer at the start of a rally. And while Biden’s notoriously loose tongue got him into trouble, the significance of his comments is not as serious as Trump’s false claim Tuesday night in Pennsylvania that Democrats are already cheating in Lancaster County, in what appeared to be his final message. trying to sow doubt in advance about the fairness of the elections.

But the fallout from Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment in 2016 has shown that inaccuracy and implicit contempt can haunt candidates and their surrogates in the election endgame. In a neck-and-neck race that can be decided by just thousands of votes in swing states, neither Harris nor Trump can afford mistakes. And the history of presidential elections is littered with incidents that may seem insignificant at the time but could have broader consequences. Hinchcliffe’s criticism of Puerto Rico is a classic example, as it has left Trump struggling to please Puerto Rican voters in Lehigh County, a key area of ​​Pennsylvania where he had hoped to eat into the Democratic vote.

Tuesday’s controversy is also likely to revive speculation about Biden’s future role in the campaign. After all, he was forced to suspend his re-election bid after a disastrous debate performance on CNN in June, which exposed his advanced age and raised questions about his cognition. Although he has appeared several times with Harris, he has been used sparingly during her campaign in recent weeks. And as CNN reported Tuesday, his gaffes have drawn reactions — from eye-rolls to outright anger — from some of Harris’ campaign staff.

Last week, the president referred to Trump in New Hampshire and said, “We need to lock him up,” before quickly adding, “lock him up politically.” Shut him out. That is what we have to do.” The comment went viral on conservative talk radio and social media as Republicans claimed it proved Trump’s claims that Biden had weaponized the Justice Department against the Republican nominee. On Friday in Arizona, Biden referred to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived being shot in the head during a 2011 campaign event, in the past tense, suggesting she was no longer alive.

While aides have previously dismissed slip-ups as “vintage Biden,” noting his history of blunders and the president’s tendency to make mistakes, they also acknowledge there is no room for error.

“We are in ‘Do No Harm’ mode,” said an official involved in discussions about Biden’s role, according to reporting by CNN’s Kayla Tausche, MJ Lee and Kevin Liptak.

That approach may have gone off the rails on Tuesday evening.