White House Stenographer Protested ‘Breach of Protocol’ After Biden Team Edited ‘Garbage’ Transcript To Make Him Look Better

AP Photo/Ben Curtis

The White House stenographer’s office reportedly complained to President Joe Biden’s press team about a “breach of protocol” after they changed an official transcript to make Biden look better following his controversial “garbage” comment about former President Donald Trump’s supporters.

According to an AP report published on Thursday, the White House press office changed Biden’s transcript to read “supporter’s” instead of “supporters” after the president controversially remarked, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his [Trump’s] supporters.”

While the official stenographer’s transcript showed that Biden said “supporters” without an apostrophe, the Biden press office reportedly added the apostrophe to make it look as though Biden was referring to just one Trump supporter: comedian Tony Hinchcliffe.

According to AP, which spoke to two government officials and obtained internal emails on the matter, “The change was made after the press office ‘conferred with the president,’” prompting the head of the stenographers office to complain about the “breach of protocol and spoliation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.”

“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” they protested. “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.”

House Republican Conference chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) warned the White House on Wednesday that the edited transcript could be in violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

“White House staff cannot rewrite the words of the President of the United States to be more politically on message,” they warned.

Biden received backlash after he appeared to refer to Trump supporters as “garbage” in response to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s controversial joke about Puerto Rico at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally this week.

The White House quickly walked back the comment, however, insisting Biden had only meant to refer to Hinchcliffe as garbage, despite his words indicating otherwise.

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