Biden's ‘garbage’ gaffe could elect Trump and do lasting damage to his party 

On Tuesday, President Biden seemed to call people who support Donald Trump garbage. During a video conference with Latino supporters, Biden said, “Just the other day, a speaker at [Trump’s Madison Square Garden] rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage.’ … The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.” 

While there is some dispute about what Biden really meant, former Trump immediately put the comment to good use. Campaigning in Wisconsin, he rode in a garbage truck to his rally, wearing the kind of safety vest that sanitation workers wear when they are on the job.  

He started that rally by saying, “I have to begin by saying 250 million Americans are not garbage.” He continued: “Kamala has been comparing her political opponents to the most evil mass murderers in history, and now, speaking on a call for her campaign last night, crooked Joe Biden finally said what he and Kamala really think of our supporters. He called them garbage.” 

At a rally in Rocky Mount, N.C., he told the audience that “Joe Biden finally said what he and Kamala really think of our supporters. He called them 'garbage,' and they mean it, even though, without question, my supporters are far higher quality than crooked Joe, lyin’ Kamala.” 

With no hint of irony or self-knowledge he proclaimed, “My response to Joe and Kamala is very simple: You can’t lead America if you don’t love Americans. You just can’t.” 

Trump’s cronies jumped on the bandwagon. "Garbage?" Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said. "What they say about us actually says more about them. What are we going to do about it? Get to WORK. Elect @realDonaldTrump. Elect Republicans. Call our friends and neighbors to VOTE!"  

And, not be outdone, vice presidential candidate JD Vance wrote, "A mother mourning her son who died of a fentanyl overdose is not garbage. A truck driver who can't afford rising diesel prices is not garbage. A father who wants to afford groceries is not garbage. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden ought to be ashamed of themselves."  

Voters should not be taken in by such faux outrage.  

Trump has never shown that he loves America or the American people. Quite the contrary — he has made calling America and Americans who oppose him garbage or worse a regular part of his campaign.

But despite Trump’s hypocrisy and the media distortions of Biden’s remark, this could do lasting damage to the Democratic brand, further alienating working people who already see Democrats as elitists who look down on them.

Before looking at that damage, let’s look at the many times Trump has used the word "garbage" or similar expressions to describe this country and its citizens. 

On Oct. 25, he called this country “a garbage can for the rest of the world to dump the people that they don’t want.” The same day in Arizona, Trump reprised his view.  

"We're a dumping ground. We're like a — we're like a garbage can for the world. That's what, that's what's happened to us. We're like a garbage can.” He continued, "First time I've ever said ‘garbage can.’ But you know what? It's a very accurate description." 

Last May, on Memorial Day, he posted the following comment:  "Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country." 

There is nothing new about the way Trump shows how he feels about Americans. 

In November 2023 he promised that if he is returned to the Oval Office, “we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections. They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.” 

In 2019, when he was president, he said “The Never Trumper Republicans, though on respirators with not many left, are in certain ways worse and more dangerous for our Country than the Do Nothing Democrats. Watch out for them, they are human scum!” 

And who could forget his comments in 2018 disparaging immigrants as coming from “sh-thole countries”? 

Trump says those things, and the news media gives them much less attention than it is giving Biden’s remarks. It should make sure that it highlights the hypocrisy of what Trump did and said in North Carolina and Wisconsin. 

That hypocrisy also was on display in the way Trump tried to distance himself from and downplay the joke that a comedian at his Madison Square Garden rally made about Puerto Rico. "But I have no idea, they put a comedian in, which everybody does," Trump said. "You throw comedians in. You don't vet them. Now what they've done is taken somebody that has nothing to do with the party, has nothing to do with us.” 

Then, even as he makes a big deal over Biden’s garbage remark, he claimed the comment about Puerto Rico was not worth discussing.  “I can't imagine it's a big deal.”  

But voters and journalists seem to have short memories about Trump’s own destructive comments. And hypocrisy is, after all, a common part of political life. 

That is why what Biden said may help elect Trump and return to power the MAGA movement, with its disdain for this country and their critics. And whatever happens on Nov. 5, Biden’s comment will become part of the story that Trump and his allies will continue to tell about the Democratic Party.

Biden seemed to understand this. He tried to walk back what he said. A short time after he used the garbage word, he posted the following on X: "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....That's all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don't reflect who we are as a nation."  

Unfortunately, as journalist Jessica Levine reminds us, “Words are very powerful, and they cannot be taken back no matter how hard you try.” This is especially true when they fit into a pre-existing narrative.

Republicans are distorting what Biden said and linking it to Barack Obama’s 2008 remark that people in rural areas who opposed him spent their lives bitterly clinging to their “bibles” and “guns,” and Hilary Clinton’s 2016 description of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” Recall that Clinton also called them “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And (Trump) has lifted them up.” 

Political scientists and commentators have noted the damage that such statements have done to Democrats. They point out that Democrats have become, and are seen to be, the party of cultural elites. As Harvard’s Michael Sandel has put it: “Center-left elites abandoned old class loyalties and took on a new role as moralizing life-coaches, dedicated to helping working-class individuals shape up to a world in which they were on their own.”

He further explains, “For all the thousands and thousands of lies Trump tells, the one authentic thing about him is his deep sense of insecurity and resentment against elites, which he thinks have looked down upon him throughout his life.”  

Republicans will use Biden’s garbage comment to feed that narrative. That comment, even though it has been misconstrued, adds to the work that Democrats have to do to convince millions of people who support Trump that they understand the resentment that Sandel highlights and that they respect people who care about bibles and guns.  

If they cannot do so, Trumpism will live on long after Trump. 

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. His views do not necessarily reflect those of Amherst College.