Joe Biden had largely been an afterthought one week before the election in which he’d once hoped to win a second term. Not anymore.

The president inadvertently injected himself into the homestretch of the campaign and may have handed a big assist to his erstwhile rival. Ex-President Donald Trump, who is struggling to quell a furor over his bigotry-filled rally at Madison Square Garden earlier this week.

Biden mentioned Puerto Rico, slandered as a “floating island of garbage” by a comedian at Trump’s event on Sunday night. But his clumsy defense of the self-governing American territory. And the vital swing voters in its diaspora on the US mainland. Sparked a new political firestorm and distracted from Vice Kamala President Harris’ big closing argument speech against. A White House backdrop on Tuesday night.

“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’m – in my home state of Delaware.  They’re good, decent, honorable people,” Biden said during virtual remarks in a Voto Latino get-out-the-vote call meant to help Harris.

The White House quickly tried to clean up the president’s remarks, with spokesman Andrew Bates saying. He’d been referring to the “hateful rhetoric” at the rally in New York, not the former president’s backers. He said that Biden had actually said this: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

And in a further sign that the White House recognizes the potential political fallout of the episode. Biden himself took to social media to address it.

“Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage. Which is the only word I can think of to describe it. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation,” Biden wrote on X.

Biden’s comment drew immediate comparisons with then-Democratic nominee Hillary’s Clinton’s remark in 2016 that half of Trump’s supporters should be “put into the basket of deplorables” because of their “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic” views. Her remarks became a rallying call for Trump and conservative media and remain a badge of honor for Trump fans. Who view East Coast Democratic elites as condescending and disdainful of their way of life.

Harris now has a new political problem

No one can say how this latest twist in a turbulent campaign will affect the final result. But in the vicious heat of the last week of the deadlocked presidential campaign. When even a few imprecise words can wreak significant political consequences, it may not matter what Biden really meant. Perception is everything.

Just when Harris’ team wanted to keep the attention on Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. Which played into her contrast message on Tuesday night, the president handed Harris a political mess. She’s now almost certain to be asked whether she also regards Trump’s backers as “garbage.” Her answer will only prolong the story. The former president is also likely to seize on the gaffe to argue that Democrats view working Americans in the heartland with contempt.

A Trump fundraising email Tuesday evening read: “FIRST Hillary called you a DEPLORABLE! THEN they called you a FASCIST! And moments ago Kamala’s boss Biden called you GARBAGE!”

His campaign has already been trying to twist fallout from claims that Trump pined for the kind of generals. That served Adolf Hitler into an argument that Harris believes all of his supporters are Nazis.

Biden’s “garbage” remark may also offer Trump an opening to finally spin his way out of the backlash about Puerto Rico caused by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at the New York rally.

More broadly, a Biden comment that will be portrayed by pro-Trump media as contempt for the ex-president’s supporters came at exactly the moment. That Harris is trying to come across as a unifying figure to win over Republicans. Who are disaffected with Trump’s extremism but are not yet ready to take the leap to vote for a Democrat.

“Here is my pledge to you,” Harris said on Tuesday night, at a rally on the Ellipse in Washington, the spot.  Where Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell” before the invasion of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. “I pledge to seek common ground and commonsense solutions to make your life better.”

The vice president went on: “To people who disagree with me, unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table.”