Biden angers GOP associating 'garbage' with Trump supporters

President Joe Biden has drawn fire from Republicans due to comments he made at a Voto Latino campaign call Tuesday night -- when his wording seemed to be referring to the supporters of former President Donald Trump as “garbage.”

"Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage,’” Biden said, according to a video clip on CNN.

He went on to call Puerto Ricans "good, decent, honorable people" before adding, "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters."

The comment was followed by: "His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American. It's totally contrary to everything we've done, everything we've been."

Republicans quickly pounced on the comment, comparing it to Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment in 2016.

Sen. Marco Rubio broke the news to Trump onstage as he campaigned in Allentown, Philadelphia.

Trump responded, "Remember, Hillary said 'deplorable.'"

"That didn't work out," he continued. "'Garbage' I think is worse, right?"

Trump Campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded by saying, "Joe Biden and Kamala Harris hate America and don't deserve four more years. Kamala must answer for this disgraceful attack on tens of millions of Americans."

The new controversy comes one week out from the election, and on the night that Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her closing campaign message on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C.

“The President referred to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage,’” a White House spokesperson said in a statement.

A transcript of the remarks given to ABC News by the White House has an apostrophe at the end of “supporter's,” but it is unclear from the video of Biden’s remarks whether the president meant that word in the possessive.

A spokesman for Harris’ campaign referred ABC News to the White House’s official statement.

Biden responded shortly afterward with a post on X, saying that it was specifically the "hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump's supporter" that he was calling "garbage."

-ABC News' Justin R. Gomez

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this week that if elected, former President Donald Trump will put him in "control" of America's public health agencies.

Kennedy made the remarks on a Zoom call with supporters Monday night.

The agencies Kennedy mentioned include the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal Drug Administration, the National Institute of Health and the United States Department of Agriculture.

"The key, which President Trump has promised me, is control of the public health agencies, which is HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others. And also the USDA, which is, you know, key to making America healthy, because we’ve got to get off of seed oils and we’ve got to get off of pesticides... and we need to make that transition to regenerative agriculture," Kennedy said.

RFK Jr., who made his own bid for president in the 2024 election, told supporters what he would do if appointed the position.

"I want to make sure to reorient NIH, so that instead of developing drugs and serving as an incubator for new pharmaceutical products, that instead NIH will be figuring out what’s causing these autism rates and autoimmune diseases and the neurodevelopmental diseases," Kennedy said.

"And I want to make sure that the FDA -- that the people on the panels at FDA do not have conflicts of interest, their people are genuinely interested in public health," he added.

"I want to end the financial entanglements – the fact that the FDA gets half of its budget from the pharmaceutical companies. I’d like to get the pharma ads off of TV," Kennedy said.

Kennedy’s remarks drew condemnation from Trump’s former surgeon general Jerome Adams.

"If RFK has a significant influence on the next administration, that could further erode people's willingness to get up to date with recommended vaccines, and I am worried about the impact that could have on our nation's health, on our nation's economy, on our global security,” Adams said at a public health conference, according to according to New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg.

-ABC News' Will McDuffie

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley told Fox News' Bret Baier on Tuesday evening that she hasn’t spoken with former President Donald Trump since June — but she's prepared to support his campaign, if asked.

“Last time I talked to him was back in June,” Haley said. “They're very aware that we're on standby. They know that we would be there to help.”

“But look, we're on the same team," Haley continued. "It is their campaign's decision on what he needs in these last final days, it does not bother me at all.”

ABC News has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

In the same interview, Haley denounced the messaging at Trump's rally in New York earlier this week, calling it "overly masculine" and "edgy." She said it was "harmful" to allow a comedian to disparage Puerto Ricans, and she thought that the choice of speakers might have made women feel "uncomfortable."

"This is not a time for them to get overly masculine with this bromance thing that they’ve got going," she said. "Fifty-three percent of the electorate are women. Women will vote. They care about how they’re being talked to."

Despite those criticisms, she said, "There's no bad blood between me and the president. We want Donald Trump to win."

Haley stressed that she is not voting for Trump for his personality, but rather for his policies, adding: “I don't agree with Trump 100% of time, but I don't agree with Kamala Harris on anything.”

-ABC News' Soorin Kim

The Colorado Secretary of State's office posted partial voting system passwords online but the error did not pose an immediate security threat to the state’s elections, officials said on Tuesday.

"The Colorado Department of State is aware that a spreadsheet located on the Department’s website improperly included a hidden tab including partial passwords to certain components of Colorado voting systems," Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office said in a statement. "This does not pose an immediate security threat to Colorado’s elections, nor will it impact how ballots are counted."

The Colorado GOP first announced the incident on Tuesday and released an affidavit from an individual purporting to find the hidden tab. The individual’s name was redacted.

"We hear all the time in Colorado from Secretary Griswold and Governor Polis that we represent the 'Gold Standard' for election integrity, a model for the nation," said Dave Williams, chairman of the Republican Party of Colorado in a press release. "One can only hope that by the Secretary of State posting our most sensitive passwords online to the world dispels that myth," said Williams

According to Griswold's office, there are two unique passwords for every election equipment component which are kept in separate places, held by different parties and can only be used with physical in-person access to a voting system.

Under Colorado law, voting equipment must be stored in secure rooms that are under 24/7 surveillance.

"No person may be present in a secure area unless they are authorized to do so or are supervised by an authorized and background-checked employee," Griswold said. "There are also strict chain of custody requirements that track when a voting systems component has been accessed and by whom."

-ABC News' Laura Romero