The White House propaganda team “engaged in a ‘breach of protocol‘ when it altered the transcript of President Biden’s ‘garbage‘ remark about Donald Trump’s supporters Tuesday.” Altering an official printout to mislead the public in a press release is a big deal. Karine Jean-Pierre is in hot water up to her Sideshow Bob style hairdo. It’s amazing how much difference one little apostrophe can make. The stenographers are furious.
Official transcript altered
What Joe Biden said on the official transcript and what the quote in the press release said are two very different things. Even though they don’t look much different at first glance.
Joe may be so confused that he’s incompetent to run the administration but he knew exactly what he meant. After his handlers slapped him around and took away his ice cream for punishment, he went public to recant his statement. As ordered.
Everyone knows that there isn’t any love lost between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. When one of Trump’s rally guests made a controversial joke about Puerto Rico, Joe had to throw his two cents on the table. He was pushed out in front of a Latino group to try and convince them to vote for Kamala Harris. Two official stenographers were on hand to document his remarks.
Their transcript reflects exactly what Joe Biden said, their supervisor defends. He called Trump supporters “garbage.” All of them. Not just Tony Hinchcliffe, the comedian who made the tasteless joke.
In the official transcript, prepared by official and highly trained stenographers, Biden was responding to a question from the Latino group about “a comedian’s comments about Puerto Rico being ‘a floating island of garbage‘ during Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden Sunday.”
Apparently, Joe’s never actually been to Puerto Rico. He had an answer, alright. “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.” Meaning Trump’s supporters. We’re now deplorable garbage.
All in the apostrophe
When the propaganda corps heard that, they went into instant damage control mode. Karine Jean-Pierre showed the team why she gets the big bucks. Oh, that’s easy to fix, she observed. The expert spin doctor had a quick and simple prescription. Add an apostrophe right here. “The White House press office, however, added an apostrophe to ‘supporter’s,’ suggesting that Biden was only attacking the comedian.”
They didn’t change the transcript, they intentionally misquoted it. Since phonetically they’re exactly the same, that should be easy to cover up and justify. They weren’t expecting the stenographers to get testy about it.
It turns out that’s a really big no-no. The White House has the ability to withhold a transcript from the public if they don’t like what it says. What they aren’t allowed to do is “alter” what it says.
“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” the supervisor of the White House stenographers “fumed.” She emailed in a formal protest.
“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.”
That’s embarrassing. What Joe’s handlers did was “a breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.” Don’t do that again!
