SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — President Joe Biden returned to his birthplace in Pennsylvania, making a final campaign stop Saturday for Vice President Kamala Harris and again let loose — offering the kind of unfiltered political sentiments that have become fairly common in recent weeks.
Biden slammed Harris’ rival, former Republican President Donald Trump, and his supporters on policy issues during a speech in Scranton, but then suggested that he’d hit back — literally — on faux “macho guys.”
“There’s one more thing Trump and his Republican friends want to do. They want to have a giant tax cut for the wealthy,” Biden told the local chapter of the carpenters union. Then, apparently referencing people backing Trump, he added, “Now, I know some of you guys are tempted to think it’s macho guys.”
“I tell you what, man, when I was in Scranton, we used to have a little trouble going down the plot once in a while,” Biden continued. “These are the kind of guys you’d like to smack in the ass.”
During a rally later Saturday night in North Carolina, Trump poked fun at Biden, asking the crowd, “I don’t even know, is he still around?”
Biden’s comment in Scranton drew laughs from the crowd. But it was another moment of his veering off political script, something that’s now happening frequently with the president — even though he has played a decidedly limited role in promoting Harris, making few campaign stops for his onetime running mate.
Earlier this week, Biden sparked an uproar by responding to racist comments at a recent Trump rally made by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who referred to the U.S. island territory of Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said in response.
White House press officials altered the official transcript of Biden’s remarks, drawing objections from federal workers who transcribe what the president says for posterity, according to two U.S. government officials and an internal email obtained by The Associated Press.
And the reference to “garbage” followed Biden — during a recent stop at a campaign office in New Hampshire — saying of Trump, “We’ve got to lock him up” before quickly amending his comments to note he meant that Democrats need to “politically lock him up.”
Biden’s Saturday remarks come at a moment when gender issues and diverging partisan loyalties between men and women have emerged as a top feature of the campaign.
Trump has pushed masculine tropes in a bid to garner more male voters throughout his campaign. He’s supported a return to traditional gender roles and leaned into themes like “ protecting women ” whether they “like it or not” in the campaign’s closing days.
Harris has taken a far different approach, pledging to protect access to abortion and increase government spending to help families cover the costs of housing and childcare.
Though he spent decades as a senator from Delaware, Biden spent his early childhood in Scranton and Saturday’s event was a homecoming for the sidelined president in several ways. He spoke at the same union hall he visited on Election Day in 2020
“Let them know how important this election is,” Biden told the crowd of about 200 enthusiastic supporters. When he noted, “I’m nothing special,” one audience member shouted back, “Sure you are,” sparking chants of “Thank you, Joe.”
The president exhorted attendees to vote “for yourself and your families, people you grew up with, the people you come from.”
“Don’t forget where you come from,” Biden thundered to shouts and applause. “Don’t leave behind the people you grew up with.”
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Weissert reported from Washington.
