White House press officials altered the official transcript of a call in which President Joe Biden appeared to take a swipe at supporters of Donald Trump, drawing objections from the federal workers who document such remarks for posterity, according to two U.S. government officials and an internal email obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
Biden, according to a transcript prepared by the official White House stenographers, told the Latino group on a Tuesday evening video call, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
The transcript released by the White House press office, however, rendered the quote with an apostrophe, reading “supporter’s” rather than “supporters,” which aides said pointed to Biden criticizing Hinchcliffe, not the millions of Americans who are supporting Trump for president.
This is about an apostrophe from a verbal statement.
I used to transcribe podcasts and you make damned sure that what was said - including every “umm”, (long pause) or questionable comment - is what you typed out.
I would think for the WH stenographers they would be mandated to do that.
Absolutely. Did you do so in a language in which an unvoiced apostrophe is the difference between the possessive and plural? Because here in English, at least the American variety we do that
Did you read the article? The difference between the two transcripts was:
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters”
vs
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s”
And stenographers use a special keyboard that records phonics, not words. It doesn’t have punctuation. That gets added later.
And how can you tell if he said apostrophe?
The context of the words before and after.
Making the word “supporters” possessive means the sentence makes no sense at all.
Oh you’re missing a [garbage].
“The only employees out there are Bobs” vs “The only employees out there are Bob’s [employees]”
Is it the best and most precise English? No, it’s a known trait of Biden’s that he trips over words and doesn’t have the best intuitive sense of sentence structure when he’s speaking informally. Especially when he’s relaxed enough to let his stutter through. Personally as a fellow stutterer I find it relatable.
The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s demonization of Latinos.
Makes sense to me.
It’s explained in the summary you posted.
Yeah, honestly…“altered” in a headline is itself biased, when “corrected” is entirely plausible. The transcriber had no idea if Biden meant to have an apostrophe there.
Also, maybe spend the final week of what could be our final democratic election covering something of importance, AP.
This isn’t the first time.
It’s made headlines at least twice, but we only hear about it when the stenographers complain
Obviously it’s not the end of the world, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept revisionism.