Just six days before the US election, one-time US presidential contender Joe Biden made a new blunder for many that has Kamala Harris now scrambling to collect what she can from the new statements of the American president.

In his statements yesterday, Tuesday, Joe Biden seems to have called Donald Trump’s supporters “garbage”, causing a strong reaction from Republicans. Biden’s statement appears to come after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who took the stage at a major Trump campaign rally in Madison Square Garden on Sunday, called Puerto Rico “an island of garbage floating in the middle of the ocean.”

In what many saw as a failed attempt to defend Puerto Ricans, President Biden appears to have achieved the exact opposite, forcing Vice President Kamala Harris to salvage what she can from that statement in the run-up to the election, according to a CNN analysis.

The White House quickly sought to clarify the president’s remarks, with spokesman Andrew Bates saying he was referring to comedian Hinchcliffe’s remarks at the New York rally, not the former president’s supporters. And in a further sign that the White House recognizes the potential political ramifications of the episode, Biden himself took to social media to clarify.

“Earlier today I referred to the hate speech about Puerto Rico spewed by a Trump supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it. The demonization of Latinos is unconscious. That’s all I wanted to say. The comments at that rally do not reflect who we are as a nation,” Biden wrote in X.

But the damage may already be done for Kamala Harris.

The Hillary comparison

Biden’s comment drew immediate comparisons to then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s remark in 2016 that half of Trump’s supporters should be “put in the basket of deplorables” because of their “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic » of their opinions. Her comments became a rallying call for Trump and the conservative media

Although on Wednesday morning Kamala Harris went some way to patching things up by saying she strongly disagrees with any criticism of people based on who they vote for, the Trump campaign has already taken the opportunity in favor of the Republican nominee to try to create the same kind of momentum, claiming the former president is supported by “Latinos, black voters, union workers, angel moms, law enforcement officers, border guards and Americans of all faiths,” while his opponents “have characterized these great Americans as fascists, nazis and now trash’. A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign added: “There is no way to describe it: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t just hate President Trump, they despise the tens of millions of Americans who support him.”

New headache for Harris

No one can say how this latest twist in a tumultuous campaign will affect the bottom line. But in the vicious circle of the last week, even a few inaccurate words can cause significant political consequences, because perception is everything, comments the columnist of the text.

Just as Harris’ team wanted to keep the focus on Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, which played to the opposite message on Tuesday night, the president handed Harris a political mess. Now he will almost certainly be asked if he also considers Trump supporters “trash.” Her answer, whatever it is, will only drag the story out even more. Trump is also likely to use the gaffe to argue that Democrats look down on working Americans.

His campaign has already tried to spin the fallout from claims that Trump admires generals who served Adolf Hitler to an argument that Harris believes all of his supporters are Nazis.

More broadly, Biden’s comment, which will be portrayed by the pro-Trump media as a snub to the former president’s supporters, came just as Harris is trying to cast herself as a unifying figure to win over Republicans unhappy with Trump’s extremism , but they’re not yet ready to make the leap to vote for a Democrat.

But whatever Biden meant, his comments fly in the face of admonitions to Democrats from two other presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who pleaded with activists during the Democratic National Convention to give the their own political fight against Trump, but respecting his voters.

CNN’s analysis recalls the fallout from Hillary Clinton’s “deplorable” comment in 2016, which showed that inaccuracy and implied disdain can haunt candidates in the final game of an election. As he comments, Hillary Clinton’s “deplorable” comment then showed that inaccuracy and implied contempt can haunt candidates and their surrogates in the final game of the election.