The White House altered the official transcript of President Biden’s remarks this week about the Trump campaign and “garbage” as it rushed to clarify that the president’s words had been taken out of context, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.
The debate over the meaning of Mr. Biden’s words ultimately comes down to an apostrophe, which the White House press office inserted into the transcript without the authorization of the White House Stenography Office, the nonpartisan group that prepares the official record.
The head of the stenography office said the alteration, which was first reported by The Associated Press, was a violation of protocol. It was also a sign of how seriously the White House took the uproar over the remarks, which drew waves of criticism from Republicans just days before a tossup election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump.
The comments in question came on Tuesday night as Mr. Biden spoke during a video call with Latino supporters about Tony Hinchcliffe, a comedian and Trump supporter who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
According to the initial transcript prepared by the stenographers, Mr. Biden said “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
Republicans seized on the remark, saying Mr. Biden was insulting all Trump supporters. White House officials tried to clarify that Mr. Biden was talking about Mr. Hinchcliffe’s comments alone. Officials from the press office tried to reach out to the supervisor’s office, but moved ahead with the alteration without hearing back, according to the people familiar with the matter.
They released a transcript to reporters that rendered the quote as “his supporter’s” demonization, meaning that Mr. Hinchcliffe’s demonization was garbage.
The supervisor of the stenographer’s office, Amy Sands, said in an email to White House officials that the press office’s decision to amend the transcript without her approval was “a breach of protocol and spoliation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices,” according to people who saw the email and described its contents. The press officials had “conferred with the president,” according to the email exchange.
Ms. Sands said White House officials could have withheld the transcript if they objected to the original version but they “cannot edit it independently.” She did not weigh in on the accuracy of the apostrophe.
The people who saw the email spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private email. Ms. Sands did not return an email seeking comment.
“The president confirmed in his tweet on Tuesday evening that he was addressing the hateful rhetoric from the comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman who posted the amended transcript on social media on Wednesday night after Mr. Biden finished his Zoom call with Latino supporters. “That was reflected in the transcript.”
House Republicans accused the White House, in a letter they released on Wednesday, of violating the Presidential Records Act by “releasing a false transcript.” Democrats have, however, accused Republicans of faux outrage given that Mr. Trump has called his political opponents “vermin” and “enemy of the people.”
In their letter to the White House counsel, Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, and Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and chairman of the House Oversight Committee, wrote: “White House staff cannot rewrite the words of the president of the United States to be more politically on message.”
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