First came streaming giant, self-described socialist, and internet superstar Hasan Piker, who posted online, “I love that Trump can run on using the military against ‘the enemies from within,’ mass deportation camps, and that ‘immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country’ but god forbid someone correctly calls them trash for supporting that s***!!!!!!” (Emphasis added.) 

Piker later repeated this sentiment, falsely saying of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) that “this a**hole literally advocated to kill BLM AND pro-Palestinian protestors. he IS garbage. so are his supporters.” Cotton advocated invoking federal law and using the military to suppress violent Black Lives Matter riots, not peaceful protests, that left at least 25 people dead.

Piker is one of the most famous people on the entire internet, with millions of adoring followers and a viral influence on political discourse that really can’t be overstated. So, it’s disturbing enough to see him echoing such a hateful sentiment about roughly half the country, but Piker wasn’t the only one.

Another left-wing streamer, Steven Bonnell, aka “Destiny,” said of the controversy, “Biden was right when he called them garbage; Hillary was right when she called them deplorables.”

This is really sad. 

The notion that people are “trash” just because they vote differently than you is incredibly close-minded and toxic, hence why Biden is attempting to retreat from his initial statement. It strips the world of its shades of gray and nuances and arrogantly pretends that the issues that divide us aren’t complex enough for people of good faith to land on opposite sides. And it flattens people into one-dimensional creatures, which we fundamentally are not. 

There are people of all political persuasions who volunteer at soup kitchens in their communities, treat their neighbors with profound kindness, sacrifice to serve our country, and do many of the other things that make someone a good person. Who they check off on their ballots every few years is a tiny and frankly inconsequential piece of the 1,000-piece puzzle that is their character. 

And despite his many flaws, there are plenty of understandable reasons people might vote for former President Donald Trump.

Is someone who struggled to feed his family under the Biden-Harris administration “garbage” for voting for change? Is someone whose family member died because of Biden’s botched Afghanistan pullout that got 13 U.S. service members killed really “garbage” for voting for Trump? Is someone whose family member was murdered by a criminal illegal immigrant who came across the border under Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s policies “garbage” for voting against them?

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One might think these people are wrong or misguided, but they are certainly not “garbage.” Prioritizing these concerns over other legitimate concerns that might draw other people toward supporting Harris and over Trump’s ample shortcomings does not make someone a bad person. At all. 

To suggest otherwise is the height of intellectual arrogance. It’s to look at your fellow Americans with contempt rather than curiosity and to reveal that you have a remarkably closed mind. That some of the people wielding the most influence over the political development of future generations hold this toxic perspective is actually, in some sense, more concerning than whether a mentally addled president, on the way out, said it or not in the first place. 

Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.