Joe Biden issued a statement saying he “wanted to say” earlier on Tuesday that a pro-Trump comedian’s “hateful rhetoric” about Puerto Rico was “nonsense.” But in an edited video clip that was already circulating widely on social media on Tuesday evening, one line that came out of Biden’s mouth was: “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”

Republican politicians and right-wing media quickly picked up the clip to claim that Biden had called Trump supporters trash, comparing his comments to Hillary Clinton’s labeling of half of Trump supporters as belonging to “a basket of deplorable people.” in 2016, a comment that is widely heard. seen as undermining her campaign.

Biden’s entire comments from Tuesday are somewhat garbled, and some journalists who transcribed the comments argued that Biden really seemed to be trying to reference comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s comments, and not all of Trump’s supporters, while others reported that the president had indeed suggested that Trump supporters themselves were trash.

Biden’s comment came during a Zoom call with Voto Latino, in which Biden referenced Hinchcliffe’s comments and said the Puerto Ricans he knows are “good, decent, honorable people. The only crap I see floating out there is from his supporters – his – his demonization of things is unconscionable, and it’s un-American, and it’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done. But it wasn’t entirely clear whether he had said the singular “supporters” or the plural “supporters,” describing Trump’s base more broadly.

The official transcript of Biden’s remarks, released Tuesday evening by the White House press office, includes the comment with an apostrophe: “The only trash I see floating out there is that of his supporter — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable , and it’s un-American. .”

At a campaign event with Trump, Senator Marco Rubio framed the comment as “breaking news” and told Trump supporters that Biden had dismissed a large number of ordinary Americans as “trash,” while conservative media amplified the comment. Biden quickly tweeted that he “meant to say” the comedian’s comments were “nonsense.”

The furor over Biden’s “garbage” comments comes on what should have been a big night for Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, as she tried to deliver her closing argument of the campaign and urged the country to “turn the page” on Trump. . Harris spoke before tens of thousands of supporters in Washington DC. She made her plea at the location where Trump addressed his supporters on January 6, before many of them subsequently stormed the US capital in an attempt to halt the certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Biden’s somewhat garbled original comments mark another blunder for a politician prone to blunders on the eve of a very close election.

Polling averages show Harris and Trump remain locked in what the Guardian poll tracker calls a nail-biting presidential race.

On Tuesday night, polling expert Nate Silver tweeted that if Harris loses, “you’ll get a good opinion…from me about Joe Biden.”

Hinchcliffe, the host of a podcast called Kill Tony, was the first speaker at a rally for Trump at Madison Square Garden on Sunday evening. His racist comments have drawn widespread condemnation, including from Republicans, and were even disavowed by the Trump campaign.

“There is literally a floating waste island in the middle of the ocean right now. Yes. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe said. He also said that Latinos “like to make babies… There is no backing down. They don’t. They are coming in, just like they did to our country.”

NBC reported that Hinchcliffe tested the same joke about Puerto Rico, and that the joke bombed, during a comedy set in New York the night before the Trump rally.