Trump calls for supporters to 'forgive' Biden in show of unity after president calls supporters 'garbage'
President Trump called on a crowd of supporters to "forgive" President Biden after he compared the former president's supporters to garbage.
"Wow. That's terrible," Trump said, invoking Hillary Clinton’s infamous "deplorable" remarks in the weeks before the 2016 election. "And then she said irredeemable. That didn't work out."
The Republican nominee called on his supporters to forgive him during a packed rally at the PPL Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
"Garbage, I think, is worse," he said. "But he doesn't know. You have to please forgive him."
Trump said that Biden "really doesn't know" what he said.
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"Please forgive him for not knowing what he said," Trump said. "These people are terrible, terrible, terrible to say a thing like that. But he really doesn't know. He really honestly, he doesn't. And I'm convinced that he likes me more than he likes Kamala. But that's a terrible thing."
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Trump's call for unity – and forgiveness – came after the president called Trump supporters' garbage during a get-out-the-vote call for Voto Latino.
"The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters," Biden said. "His, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been."
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Biden's comments came after Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
"And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico ‘a floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something," Biden said. "I don’t know the Puerto Rican that I know… or Puerto Rico where I’m – in my home state of Delaware – they’re good, decent, honorable people."
Biden’s remarks came just as Vice President Kamala Harris was set to take the stage for a major rally in Washington, DC.
"Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporters at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it," Biden posted on X later that evening after his comments drew swift backlash.
"His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say," he said. "The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation."
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told Fox News' Jacqui Heinrich that President Biden "referred to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage.’"
"The president was referencing a joke by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in which he likened Puerto Rico to an island of floating "garbage" in the middle of the ocean," Bates said.