The White House press office engaged in a “breach of protocol” when it altered the transcript of President Biden’s “garbage” remark about Donald Trump’s supporters Tuesday over the objection of the administration’s stenographer’s office, according to an internal email.
Stenographers heard the 81-year-old president tell a Latino group — in response to a comedian’s comments about Puerto Rico being “a floating island of garbage” during Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden Sunday — that “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
The White House press office, however, added an apostrophe to “supporter’s,” suggesting that Biden was only attacking the comedian.
“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” the supervisor of the White House stenographers fumed in an email to the press office, obtained by the Associated Press.
“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,” the missive continued.
The supervisor further declared that the way the situation was handled amounted to “a breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
