After Joe Biden called Trump supporters “garbage,” President Trump responded as only he can. Trump rode around in a garbage truck with an orange safety vest on in place of his usual suit jacket. Then he gave a speech dressed the same way. At Real Clear Politics, Philip Wegmann explains that Trump didn’t allow Biden to get away with calling half the country garbage. Wegmann writes:
As the White House tried to clean up President Biden’s mess, Donald Trump waited – you couldn’t say patiently.
“Just to clarify,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday before fielding another half dozen questions about the fiasco, Biden “was not calling Trump supporters garbage.” She pointed to his statement posted on social media, his longstanding reputation for empathy, his oft-stated desire to lower the temperature.
“He does not view Trump supporters, or anybody who supports Trump as ‘garbage,’” Jean-Pierre asserted on a day the White House preferred to talk about good economic news or really anything else. After an hour, she hoped that what Republicans gleefully were calling “Garbage-gate” was over.
Then Trump landed in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He wore an orange vest, walked to a white garbage truck, and climbed into the passenger’s seat. “How do you like my garbage truck?” he asked reporters. “This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”
“I have to begin by saying, 250 million Americans are not garbage,” Trump said to open his Wisconsin rally as he walked on stage still wearing the Hi-Vis vest. Every major paper of record covered the stunt (though the press dutifully noted that he vastly overstated his support). The Internet went wild. Less than a week before the election, the garbage gaffe ripened. Trump had a feeling this would work.
A source close to the former president told RealClearPolitics that Trump came up with the idea while flipping between Vice President Kamala Harris’ speech on the Ellipse and a recording of Biden trying to denounce comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s tasteless joke at Madison Square Garden. The insult comic called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.” Biden brought up the bit during a call with Hispanic voters Tuesday but ended up saying “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
The former president made a plan that very night. “It was all Donald Trump,” a senior campaign advisor told RCP. The next day, the garbage truck was waiting for him in Wisconsin. The implicit argument: Just like Hillary Clinton had infamously denounced Trump supporters as “deplorables,” Biden had just called them “garbage.” The White House disputes this characterization, of course, but the Trump campaign feels confident they have turned trash to treasure.
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