The Memo: Trump garbage-truck stunt seeks to press advantage from Biden’s 'garbage' gaffe

Former President Trump took the wheel of a garbage truck in Wisconsin late Wednesday as he sought to keep the focus on President Biden’s misstep the previous day.

Biden appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage” during a video call with Voto Latino on Tuesday. The remark outraged conservatives, even as the White House disputed the interpretation of what the president meant.

Wednesday’s stunt from Trump quickly went viral, making it harder for Vice President Harris’s campaign to move past the controversy.

Harris had earlier tried to distance herself from Biden’s comment. 

The vice president told reporters that she did not go along with “any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” as she left Washington for a campaign event in North Carolina. She also noted that Biden had “clarified” his meaning.

The worry among Democrats is that the controversy could reverberate in the last week before Election Day — and as many millions of Americans cast their ballots early.

The episode also comes as a massive — and, for Democrats, infuriating — distraction from Harris’s address at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday evening, which her campaign had billed as part of her “closing argument” to voters. 

Some momentum in the race for the White House had appeared to shift back to the vice president earlier this week, after Trump’s rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday backfired when a comedian made a racist joke mocking Puerto Rico.

The gibe is electorally perilous because of the large Puerto Rican populations in several swing states, most notably Pennsylvania. The Keystone State is home to more than 400,000 people either born in Puerto Rico or of Puerto Rican ancestry.

Now Trump is seeking to turn the tables, trying to underscore Biden’s “garbage” comments as evidence of Democratic disdain for conservative Americans.

“We know what they believe, because look how they’ve treated you,” Trump said at a Wednesday rally in Rocky Mount, N.C. “They’ve treated you like garbage.”

Speaking to reporters out the window of the truck on Wednesday, Trump said: “How do you like my garbage truck? This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”

Shortly before, Trump received some celebrity help when former NFL star Brett Favre, speaking at a rally in Green Bay, Wis., said, “I can assure you we’re not garbage and how dare he say that.” 

White House efforts to neutralize the effect of Biden’s remarks continued Wednesday, having begun the previous night with the argument that the president had been misinterpreted.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, pressed on the issue by reporters at the daily media briefing on Wednesday, insisted that Biden “does not view Trump supporters or anybody who supports Trump as garbage.”

The core of the dispute came when Biden referenced Trump’s New York rally during the Voto Latino video call. The comedian at the Trump rally, Tony Hinchcliffe, had referred to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage.”

Biden said “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” then paused slightly and said “his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

A White House spokesperson soon afterward posted on social media a transcript of the remarks suggesting that Biden meant “his supporter’s demonization of Latinos is unconscionable.”

The addition of an apostrophe did little to quell the storm, even if it did inject some ambiguity about Biden’s meaning.

The storm is dangerous to Harris and Democrats for several reasons.

First, it helps Team Trump turn the page on the Hinchcliffe controversy. Second, it plays into long-standing conservative resentment that Democrats are sneering elitists looking down on them. And third, it forces Harris to spend time on a cleanup operation rather than taking the fight to Trump.

Several commentators have drawn a parallel to Hillary Clinton’s infamous comment in 2016 when, as the Democratic nominee, she said that about half of Trump’s supporters could be categorized as a “basket of deplorables.”

The term “deplorables” was repurposed as a badge of pride by Trump supporters.

Democrats argue that the Biden gaffe, though frustrating, is less likely to have serious political ramifications. They note that, unlike Clinton, Biden is not the candidate.

Democrats also roll their eyes at Team Trump’s supposed concern for voters’ delicate sensitivities, given that the former president has long been known for his inflammatory rhetoric.

In recent weeks alone, he has called Harris “mentally impaired,” a “low-IQ individual” and a “s--- vice president.” 

Trump defenders contend he targets political leaders rather than Americans who happen to vote for his opponents. But that claim is highly questionable. 

“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country," Trump told a crowd in New Hampshire last year.

Trump critics are also loath to give credence to the former president’s complaints about voters being insulted, given his role in stoking the Jan. 6, 2021, riot that sought to overturn the voters’ verdict as rendered in the 2020 election.

One of the criminal charges he faces for his behavior in the wake of that election is “conspiracy against rights” — the argument made by special counsel Jack Smith being that Trump’s actions, if successful, would have disenfranchised those Americans who had elected Biden.

For now, though, the visual image of Trump in his garbage truck will give fresh legs to the furor — almost certainly to the former president’s advantage.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage