(CNN) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday tried to clean up comments he made earlier that sparked immediate backlash from many who interpreted them as referring to supporters of former President Donald Trump as “garbage.” Speaking during a Voto Latino get out-the-vote call, Biden — in reaction to Trump’s offensive rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday — said, “And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico ‘a floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something .
.. I don’t know the Puerto Rican that I know.
.. or Puerto Rico where I’m – in my home state of Delaware – they’re good, decent, honorable people.
” “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said, pausing for a moment before continuing. “His, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.
” Biden’s comments drew swift backlash online, with Republicans immediately connecting them to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 remark that half of Trump’s supporters were “deplorables.” Biden’s remarks came just as Vice President Kamala Harris was set to take the stage for a major rally in Washington, DC. “Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it,” Biden posted on X later that evening.
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