White House press officials altered the official transcript of a call in which President Biden appeared to take a swipe at supporters of former President Trump, drawing objections from the federal workers who document such remarks for posterity, according to two US government officials and an internal email obtained Thursday by the AP. Referring to racist comments at a Trump rally made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who referred to Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage," Biden—according to a transcript prepared by the official White House stenographers—told a group of Latino activists on a Tuesday evening video call, "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters—his—his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American."
The transcript released by the White House press office, however, rendered the quote with an apostrophe, reading "supporter's" rather than "supporters," which aides said pointed to Biden criticizing Hinchcliffe, not the millions of Americans who are supporting Trump for president. 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 supervisor, in the email, called the press office's handling of the matter "a breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices."
"If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently," the supervisor wrote, adding, "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." 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 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 two-person stenography team on duty that evening—a "typer" and "proofer"—said any decision to change the transcript would have to be made by their supervisor. The supervisor was not immediately available to review the audio, but the press office went ahead and published the altered transcript on the White House website and distributed it to press and on social media in an effort to tamp down the story. 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 press and communications officials. (House Republicans are considering a probe.)
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