After the Associated Press reported that the White House altered the record of President Joe Biden smearing Trump supporters as “garbage,” critics ripped the media for trying to spin the edit as being taken out of context.
The cover-up was “a breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices,” according to a stenographer supervisor’s email obtained by the Associated Press (AP).
“This would be called lying in a public document,” Clay Travis, founder of Outkick, reacted on X. House Conference chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) along with others, said the edit violated the Presidential Records Act.
White House stenographers added an apostrophe to “supporters” and an em-dash to alter the meaning of Biden’s statement.
Politico’s White House bureau chief, Jonathan Lemire, immediately suggested the edit was correct. “The full Biden quote from the Zoom tonight, which is being taken out of context,” he posted on X.
A recent Gallup poll that found Americans’ trust in the media to report current events “fully, accurately and fairly” has plummeted to a record low. Only 31 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to tell the truth, one point below its low watermark of 32 percent in 2016 and 2023.
Alex Pfeiffer, a member of team Trump, slammed Lemire for dishonestly protecting the White House.
“Oh wow @JonLemire are you seeing this? You’ll correct your dishonest spin right?” Pfeiffer asked, sharing his tweet from Tuesday:
Fox News commentator Joe Concha suggested Lemire, who also works with MSNBC, will not get away with his spin:
The edit was also touted by various outlets, Breitbart News reported:
Outkick writer Ian Miller questioned if CNN’s Brian Stelter and Daniel Dale would try to cover up the AP report:
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 The AP. The authenticity of the email was confirmed by two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
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According to the email, the press office had asked the stenographers to quickly produce a transcript of the call amid the firestorm. Biden himself took to social media to say that he he was not calling all Trump supporters garbage and that he was referring specifically to the “hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally.”
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The supervisor, a career employee of the White House, raised the concerns about the press office action — but did not weigh in on the accuracy of the edit — in an email to White House communications director Ben LaBolt, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and other press and communications officials.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.