White House press officials reportedly pressured stenographers to cover up President Joe Biden’s “garbage” smear by editing the transcript to alter its meaning.
The coverup 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).
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his [Trump] supporters,” Biden said Tuesday.
The White House stenographers added an apostrophe to “supporters” and an em-dash to alter the meaning of Biden’s statement.
White House press officials pressured the stenographers, charged with preparing accurate transcripts for National Archives’s preservation, but the stenographers drew objections to the changes, according to two U.S. government officials and an internal email obtained by the Association Press.
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.
“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” the stenographer supervisor wrote. “Our Stenography Office transcript — released to our distro, which includes the National Archives — is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff.”
Vice President Kamala Harris claimed on Wednesday that Biden clarified his statement and disagreed with demonizing “people based on who they vote for.”
Biden’s smear overshadowed Harris’s closing argument that night in which she said she would be a president for “all Americans.”
“There’s no way to spin it: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t just hate President Trump, they despise the tens of millions of Americans who support him. Kamala does not deserve four more years,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national spokesperson, said Tuesday.
Critics on X immediately reacted to the news:
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.