Tossing the tabs into the garbage ... 

FRANK LUNTZ: Joe Biden might've cost Kamala Harris the election.pic.twitter.com/FugU1I2klb

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 30, 2024

Ed: Luntz is not at all a Trump fan, so this is not a statement in support of interests. Luntz is a straight shooter otherwise anyway.

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[W]hereas Biden’s line is likely to motivate voters who sorely needed motivation, the comedian’s botched joke hits home with voters who weren’t lacking for inducements to vote against Trump. ...

We can now conjure in our mind’s eye a portrait of a youngish, generally apathetic but dissatisfied male voter. He has already been primed by his exposure to Trump’s appearances in unconventional media venues. He tries to avoid exposure to Harris, but when avoidance invariably fails, he doesn’t like what he sees. An encounter with the Biden clip — and he will encounter it given how perfectly tailored it is for maximum virality — may provide the enthusiasm that was otherwise lacking. The positive factors motivating him to cast an affirmative vote for Trump were already present. Now, so too is a negative motivating factor. He has but one opportunity to jam a thumb in the eye of the people in American public life who so look down on him. He finally Googles his polling place.

Ed: People can find themselves exhausted and demotivated by prolonged political campaigns. So much of the Democrats' disqualification rhetoric and strategy aimed at demotivating Trump-leaning, low-engagement voters. Calling them "garbage" lit a fire under them in precisely the way Luntz predicts. 

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White House Press Sec. Karine Jean-Pierre clarified President Biden’s controversial “garbage” comment, saying the president was not calling Trump supporters “garbage" but referring to a comedian's offensive joke about Puerto Rico at the former president's Madison Square Garden on… pic.twitter.com/o3C1Pihpnn

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 30, 2024

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The controversy over Biden’s “garbage” quip came one week after the president made headlines when talking about Trump to a group of Democrats in New Hampshire.

Referencing the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity and the powers it might give Trump if he is reelected, Biden told his audience, “I know this sounds bizarre — it sounds like if I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up. We gotta lock him up. Politically lock him up. Lock him out. That’s what we have to do.”

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Kamala Harris just said she "won't lose a single voter" after Biden called millions of Trump supporters "garbage" pic.twitter.com/BrufYIInNV

— CatholicVote (@CatholicVote) October 30, 2024

Ed: Will she lose voters *to Trump* over it? Maybe not many, but she may not get as much enthusiasm to turn out after this kind of rhetoric -- especially after trying to stoke turnout over the "garbage island" joke by a comedian at Trump's rally. The real problem, as Luntz points out, is that Biden likely boosted turnout for Trump by confirming that the Democrat elites despise normal Americans. 

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Joe Biden has been sidelined by Kamala Harris in the final days of her campaign, with his apparent description of Donald Trump supporters as "garbage" underscoring her campaign's fears that the outgoing president is an electoral liability.

Ed: He's a disgrace, and has been since at least the Kabul bug-out and the abandonment of 14,000 Americans in Afghanistan three years ago. Its a little late to sideline him now, though. The damage has already been done, although allies of Biden and Harris are still attempting to spin this away.

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WHOOPI: I don't get why Trump supporters are so upset Biden called them garbage!

ALSO WHOOPI: Hillary was right to call half the country deplorable. pic.twitter.com/ibCqSVOn02

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 30, 2024

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It’s an Orwellian edit that would make Joseph Stalin blush. If Biden meant to say Trump supporters were demonizing Latinos and that that was garbage, he would not have paused at the end of one sentence before starting another one. In fact, amid Biden’s very visible cognitive decline, it was among the more coherent sentences that he has uttered in public in recent memory.

But the legacy media, eager to clean up a mess that could easily hurt Harris’s campaign in the last week before Election Day, bought the White House’s apostrophe trick hook, line, and sinker.

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Kamala once again defends Biden calling Trump supporters "garbage": "I think that the president has explained what he meant."

Yesterday, Kamala refused to disavow her running mate comparing Trump supporters to Nazis.

She's a sick person. pic.twitter.com/N2AW1LwOER

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 30, 2024

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“Joe Biden finally said what he and Kamala really think of our supporters,” Trump said during a Wednesday rally in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. “He called them 'garbage,' and they mean it, even though, without question, my supporters are far higher quality than crooked Joe, lyin’ Kamala.”

“My response to Joe and Kamala is very simple: You can’t lead America if you don’t love Americans. You just can’t,” he added.

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🚨 TRUMP: “How do you like my garbage truck? This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”

This man is a MASTER level troll 🤣 pic.twitter.com/sEDCn98Guv

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 30, 2024