Did Joe Biden call Trump supporters garbage and will it affect the election?

President’s remarks which White House claims only referred to rally comedian have dominated headlines just one week before election

Joe Biden has provoked a media firestorm by appearing to suggest Donald Trump’s supporters are “garbage”, in remarks that have been seized upon by Republicans.
In a call with the non-profit group Voto Latino on Tuesday, the president responded to comments made by a Trump-supporting comedian at a rally on Sunday night, in which he referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”.
On the call, Mr Biden was initially quoted as saying: “The only garbage I see floating out there is [Trump’s] supporters”.
The comment, which came as Kamala Harris was delivering a “closing arguments” speech on the White House Ellipse, threatened to derail the final days of her campaign.
It was met with a furious backlash from Republicans, including Trump, who said Ms Harris was running a “campaign of hate” against half of American voters.
The White House later pushed back, issuing a transcript of Mr Biden’s remarks that included a longer quote and an apostrophe that suggested he had misspoken.
The White House later said that Mr Biden was specifically referring to Tony Hinchcliffe, the individual who made the “garbage” comment, releasing a transcript which put an apostrophe between the “r” and “s” of “supporter’s”.
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s ─ his ─ his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” the White House transcript reads.
But according to AP sources, including two US government officials and an internal email obtained on Thursday by the news agency, White House press officials altered the official transcript of the call. 
The change was made after the press office “conferred with the president,” according to an internal email from the head of the stenographers’ office that was obtained by AP.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said Mr Biden’s words had been “taken out of context”.
“So just to clarify, he was not calling Trump supporters garbage, which is why he put this out and is why he wanted to make sure that we put out a statement that clarified what he meant and what he was trying to say, and so just want to make that very clear for folks who are watching,” she told reporters.
Asked about the incident on Wednesday, Ms Harris said Biden had “clarified his comments”, adding: “Let me be clear, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”
However, Mr Biden’s verbal slip-up has dominated news coverage of the election in the final days of the campaign.
Republicans have used the comments to drown out criticism of Hinchcliffe, who said at Trump’s rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York: “There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
The comments sparked outrage, including from the sizable Puerto Rican community. Many Puerto Rican voters live in Pennsylvania, a key swing state.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican Florida governor, said Mr Biden’s comments overshadowing Ms Harris’s speech was a “blunder” of “poetic justice”.
Marco Rubio, a Florida senator, said: “Biden only said out loud what every top Democrat actually believes about anyone who votes for Trump.”
Republicans have also attacked US media outlets that reported the corrected White House transcript of Mr Biden’s comments, accusing journalists of writing favourable stories about the president.
Trump used the controversy as a photo opportunity, sitting in a garbage truck on a campaign stop on Wednesday evening and appearing at a rally wearing a hi-vis jacket.