JUST IN: White House Edited Biden’s ‘Garbage’ Transcript Despite Objections From Stenographers

Sources close to the White House confirmed late Thursday that members of the Biden-Harris administration’s press office ordered a stenographer to amend the written record of the president’s “garbage” remark about Trump supporters, a change the White House stenographers’ office forcefully pushed back on and claimed is a “breach” of longstanding protocol around independence by record keepers.

The Associated Press reported that aides to President Joe Biden altered the transcript of a virtual meeting where he took a swipe at supporters of former President Donald Trump following his Madison Square Garden rally where a comedian referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” Asked for comment, Biden responded, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.” But a transcript released by the White House included an apostrophe to make the change “supporter’s” so that it reads as if Biden was blaming Tony Hinchcliffe, the pro-Trump comedian, rather than millions of MAGA supporters.

(VOTE: Should JD Vance Run For President In 2028?)

WATCH:

According to an internal memo from the head of the White House stenographers’ office, the change was made after staff “conferred with the president.” In the letter, the office’s supervisor called the press shop’s handling of the gaffe “a breach of protocol and spoliation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.” The document’s authenticity was confirmed by two government officials who spoke with the AP. “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 by Press Office staff.”

The White House’s alteration of Biden’s remarks may have breached the Presidential Records Act, a federal law mandating the preservation of all presidential records. House Republicans, led by Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Chair of the House Republican Conference, and Representative James Comer (R-KY), Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, quickly seized on the issue. In a letter to White House Counsel Edward Siskel, they demanded the preservation of all related documents and called for the immediate correction of the transcript to reflect Biden’s actual statement.

“Americans were rightfully insulted, then, when President Biden, seeking to boost Ms. Harris’s presidential campaign, referred to an enormous swath of the country as ‘floating . . . garbage,’” Stefanik and Comer stated in the letter. “Unsurprising too were the White House’s actions after he said them. Instead of apologizing or clarifying President Biden’s words, the White House instead sought to change them (despite them being recorded on video) by releasing a false transcript of his remarks. The move is not only craven, but it also appears to be in violation of federal law, including the Presidential Records Act of 1978.”