Just in the nick of time, with October almost done and the 2024 general election less than a week away, America may finally have its much-anticipated October surprise. Who would have thought it would come in the form of a single word: garbage? A comedian at the massive Madison Square Garden (MSG) Trump rally joked about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage,” and days later, Joe Biden used that same word to describe Donald Trump’s supporters. There are several reasons the two comments are in no way similar and why one is so much worse than the other. And then there’s the spectacle of the White House and its media allies contorting into pretzels, trying to explain away, justify, or bury Biden’s incredibly ill-timed garbage comment.

First, some perspective on the MSG routine of Trump supporter and comedian Tony Hinchcliffe is necessary. A few of his alleged jokes were off-color. The comic certainly came off as a man who has a problem with Latinos – but that could be nothing more than a matter of perception. His invitation to appear at the New York rally was probably a bad idea in hindsight.

The Garbage Can-Can

One specific wisecrack, however, sent the left-wing media into a frenzy. “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now,” Hinchcliffe told his audience. “Yeah, I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” After bipartisan backlash against this joke, he took to social media to criticize people for having no sense of humor. He pointed out that he is fond of Puerto Rico and vacations there.

It is very likely that, during a visit to the island, the performer witnessed firsthand a chronic problem Puerto Ricans have been battling for years – an issue that has been covered by the media. The US territory has been struggling with overflowing landfills and, as a result, with garbage strewn about the otherwise beautiful island. It seems clear that the comic was not referring to the people of Puerto Rico as garbage. To suggest otherwise is a stretch.

Fast forward a couple of days to someone else clearly describing a certain group of human beings as garbage.

During a campaign call to Voto Latino, which describes itself as a “civic engagement organization focused on educating and empowering a new generation of Latinx voters,” the White House incumbent took his cue from Hinchcliffe’s quip about Puerto Rico. “Donald Trump has no character,” Biden asserted. “He doesn’t give a damn about the Latino community.” Shortly after, he added:

“And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico ‘a floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something, I don’t know the Puerto Rican that I know … or Puerto Rico where I … in my home state of Delaware. They’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”

There really is no alternative way to interpret that last sentence, though the White House communications people have tried to – in entirely unconvincing ways. Elements of the left-wing media are also circling the wagons around the lame-duck commander-in-chief. One news outlet even went so far as to reframe what Biden said.

Politico reported, “Biden, in a Zoom call with the organization Voto Latino, said ‘the only garbage’ was the ‘hatred’ of Donald Trump supporters who said such things about American citizens.” It was a sneaky way of reimagining what Biden said while avoiding quoting him verbatim. It is another in the almost endless list of examples of how far certain media companies will go to cover for Biden and Kamala Harris when they make misleading, dishonest, incomprehensible, or offensive remarks.

One CNN panelist, Franklin Leonard, with a straight face, claimed that Biden only sounded as if he were denigrating Trump supporters because the president had a stutter when growing up.

The White House attempted to alter Biden’s statement using a strategically placed apostrophe. The official transcript of his remark reads, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s” – the inference being that Biden was referring directly to Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico quip. Everyone is familiar with Biden’s speech patterns, however, and his phraseology. This White House version of what he said just doesn’t fit the way the man speaks. When one also considers the number of times in past speeches that the chief executive has expressed his contempt not only for Trump but also for his supporters, there’s no credible debate about the words that came out of Biden’s mouth and what he meant.

While the media continues to spin this as something other than what it appears to be, however, certain elected Democrat senators seem to have taken his comments at face value and are in the process of distancing themselves. Senators Tammy Baldwin of Minnesota, John Tester of Montana, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, and Arizona candidate for the US Senate, Ruben Gallego, all expressed to Fox News that they disagreed profoundly with the president’s comments.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, wasted no time in taking advantage of Biden’s latest gaffe. At his rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump rode around – in uniform – in a MAGA-emblazoned garbage truck. “I have to start by saying 250 million Americans are not garbage,” Trump then told the audience. “My supporters are far higher quality than Crooked Joe and Lying Kamala.”

The Not-So-Surprising October Surprise

So, on the one hand, you have left-wing pundits, politicians, and their media allies getting into a frenzy over a comedian cracking a joke about a geographical area being an island of garbage. On the other, these very same supposedly outraged people are making excuses for someone on their side describing practically half of all Americans as garbage. It appears that, for some, the moral compass is spinning wildly. The next couple of days will reveal whether this was, indeed, the October surprise everyone had been expecting but that no one had on their bingo card.

There is one other point to be made about this latest battle over words. The relative positions of power and influence occupied by the speakers of contentious remarks determine how much gravity is added to the words spoken. As Mark Angelides, Liberty Nation’s editor-in-chief, points out:

“It is worth making a delineation. Tony Hinchcliffe is a comedian whose job is to be edgy and make jokes. Jokes are not necessarily reflective of the performer’s opinion – less reflective of the person whose name is on the top ticket [Trump]. Joe Biden, on the other hand, is not only the president of the United States, but he is also Kamala’s boss and, presumably, her most significant surrogate.”

Was Biden’s comment about Trump supporters the October surprise, then? In general, one would define this mysterious but widely anticipated phenomenon as an unexpected event significant enough to potentially swing an election decisively in one direction or the other. Biden made the remark just as Harris – his vice president – was about to make her final case to the nation for her own White House bid. By doing so, he overshadowed her address and stole the media spotlight. Any bump Harris might have received post-speech was likely erased.

Factor in the number of people who, in both 2016 and 2020, asserted they could not vote for Trump because of his rhetoric, his insults, and his famously mean tweets. Now add to the equation a sitting president effectively suggesting that everyone who votes – or has voted – for the 45th president is garbage. One could certainly argue the badly timed and decidedly ill-conceived remark meets the criteria for an October surprise.