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.
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.
The supervisor, in the email, called the press office's handling of the matter "a breach of protocol and spoliation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices." "If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently," the supervisor wrote, adding, "Our Stenography Office transcript - released to our distro, which includes the National Archives - is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff." The edit of the transcript came as the White House scrambled to respond to a wave of queries from reporters about Biden's comments.
"Let me be clear," she told reporters, "I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for." According to the email, the press office had asked the stenographers to quickly produce a transcript of the call amid the firestorm.
The supervisor was not immediately available to review the audio, but the press office went ahead and published the altered transcript on the White House website and distributed it to press and on social media in an effort to tamp down the story.
White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates that evening also posted on X the edited version of the quote and wrote that Biden was referring "To the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as 'garbage.'" The supervisor, a career employee of the White House, raised the concerns about the press office action - but did not weigh in on the accuracy of the edit - in an email to White House communications director Ben LaBolt, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and other press and communications officials.
The supervisor declined to comment to The AP and referred questions about the matter to the White House press office.
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