{"id":549,"date":"2024-11-11T09:31:23","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T09:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/the-white-house-put-an-apostrophe-in-a-transcript-and-republicans-smell-a-scandal\/"},"modified":"2024-11-11T09:31:23","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T09:31:23","slug":"the-white-house-put-an-apostrophe-in-a-transcript-and-republicans-smell-a-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/the-white-house-put-an-apostrophe-in-a-transcript-and-republicans-smell-a-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"The White House put an apostrophe in a transcript, and Republicans smell a scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As Donald Trump <\/a>and his allies continue to try to stem the fallout from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico<\/a> \u201ca floating island of garbage,\u201d Republican House leaders are seeking to keep President Joe Biden\u2019s verbal gaffe about the incident in the spotlight in the final days of the election.<\/p>\n

In a letter<\/a> to White House counsel Edward Siskel on Friday, Reps. Elise Stefanik, the House Republican conference chairwoman from New York, and James Comer, the House Oversight Committee chair from Kentucky, asked the White House for documents and internal communications about Biden\u2019s \u201cgarbage\u201d comments. They also requested that the White House release a copy of the transcript sent to the National Archives and that the White House Stenography Office\u2019s top supervisor brief the Oversight Committee.<\/p>\n

Biden made his comment on a call with Latino activists on Tuesday as he criticized Hinchcliffe\u2019s joke about Puerto Rico<\/a>. Biden was initially reported to say, \u201cThe only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters \u2014 his \u2014 his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it\u2019s un-American.\u201d\u00a0The White House transcript of Biden\u2019s remarks included an apostrophe:\u00a0\u201cThe only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter\u2019s.\u201d\u00a0In either case, the apostrophe would not be audible as spoken.<\/p>\n

Republicans pounced on the confusion, though Biden \u2014 who is known for his stumbling speech<\/a> and is prone to gaffes<\/a> \u2014 later posted to X<\/a> that he was talking about \u201cthe hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump\u2019s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally.\u201d (My colleague Zeeshan Aleem goes into detail <\/a>about the Republican response to Biden\u2019s comments.)<\/p>\n

The GOP House leaders announced Wednesday that they are launching an investigation<\/a> into Biden\u2019s comment and the transcript. In their Friday letter to Siskel, they cited a report from The Associated Press<\/a> that the White House had altered the official transcript of Biden\u2019s call to include an apostrophe in \u201csupporters\u201d after the press office \u201cconferred with the president.\u201d (NBC News, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported<\/a> that the White House updated its transcript after a conversation with Biden about his remark.)<\/p>\n

Stefanik and Comer have <\/strong>questioned whether White House officials violated federal law when they reportedly altered the official transcript of Biden\u2019s remarks. \u201cThe White House cannot simply rewrite President Biden\u2019s rhetoric,\u201d they wrote, suggesting that it was doing so \u201cto safeguard\u201d Kamala Harris\u2019 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s <\/strong>worth keeping in mind that when Trump was president, the White House repeatedly altered the transcripts<\/a> of his comments, at times even omitting some of his more controversial remarks entirely.<\/p>\n

Much has been made of how Hinchcliffe\u2019s offensive joke might affect how Puerto Ricans vote, especially in swing states. With the election mere days away, it\u2019s equally unclear how serious or impactful Stefanik and Comer\u2019s preoccupation with Biden\u2019s response \u2014\u00a0and their effort to connect Harris to the gaffe \u2014\u00a0will be.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clarissa-Jan Lim<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking\/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Donald Trump and his allies continue to try to stem the fallout from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico \u201ca floating island of garbage,\u201d Republican House leaders are seeking to keep President Joe Biden\u2019s verbal gaffe about the incident in the spotlight in the final days of the election. In a letter to White […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}