Networks MAD Trump Wants to ‘Capitalize on’ Biden ‘Appearing to’ Call Voters ‘Garbage’

Curtis Houck
October 31st, 2024 2:27 PM

Text to Speech

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On Thursday, the “Big Three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC scrambled to use their morning news shows to try and contain the damage caused by President Biden’s Tuesday night comments referring to Trump supporters as garbage, insisting he only “appear[ed]” or “seemed to disparage” them with the “gaffe.”

They also tried to make fetch happen by lamenting Trump’s team has “capitaliz[ed]” on this to “slow down” Harris’s “momentum” “[e]ven though President Biden has clarified what he meant.”

In a tease, NBC’s Today co-host Hoda Kotb started with the key drinking game word for conservatives whenever a liberal gets in trouble: “Trump attempting to seize the moment.”

Co-host Savannah Guthrie briefly invoked the campaign before the lead-off report on the weather: “Trump, trying to capitalize off of President Biden’s garbage gaffe, wearing an orange safety vest on stage.”

Kotb later had the lead-in to the presidential race recap from Trump campaign correspondent Garrett Haake: “Trump riding to his Wisconsin rally in a garbage truck, seizing on a gaffe by President Biden that began with a racist joke at the Trump rally here in New York.”

Haake wasn’t amused and knew he had to help turn this car around, including explaining away Biden’s smear:

Haake tried to have it both ways: “Trump leaning into President Biden’s garbage comments, posing in a garbage truck...attacking Joe Biden and Harris’s supporters.”

He also tried to shift attention back to Trump and this supposedly all-powerful Hinchcliffe as well as dabbling in whataboutism with Trump’s history of insults to argue the public should let Biden’s comment slide: “The controversy began with this offensive remark by a comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday...Democrats pointing to years of incendiary rhetoric from the former President demonizing his political critics.”

In the second hour and onset ahead of Today’s annual Halloween costume reveal, Saturday co-host Peter Alexander twisted himself with some mental gymnastics:

ABC’s Good Morning America was seething over this final-week blunder. Chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce insisted her candidate had nothing to do with this and the White House is “adamant” Biden was only condemning Tony Hinchcliffe’s “racist insults” Sunday at a Trump rally that Puerto Rico was “a floating island of garbage.”

Idolatrous Trump-hating correspondent Rachel Scott joined in the pity party when she’s supposed to be covering the Trump campaign, whining “Biden’s comments could undermine Vice President Kamala Harris’s message” and that Trump’s “amplifying” Biden’s remark.

Accompanied by a chyron bellyaching that Trump’s “Tr[ying] to Amplify Biden’s Words, Turn Attention From His Own Controversy,” Scott also engaged in some whataboutism by arguing the real story was Trump’s years of rhetoric

CBS Mornings co-host and Kamala Harris donor Gayle King wasn’t pleased either, fretting Trump has “zero[ed] in on a gaffe by President Biden” and “sought to capitalize on” it “with a photo-op on a garbage truck as he tried to move beyond a scandal over racist remarks by some speakers at his New York rally.”

Ah, so a days-old joke that fell completely flat by a comedian few have ever heard of os more important than comments by the sitting President of the United States?

CBS chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa relayed that Trump used a garbage truck as “his latest political set piece” to hammer the Democrats “[e]ven though President Biden has clarified what he meant”:

Costa worked to blunt this “momentum,” insisting as though he worked for Kamala Harris that she had “made clear she speaks for herself and welcomes all voters into her coalition.”

To see the relevant transcripts from October 31, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).

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