2024 presidential election update: With a week to go, Kamala Harris speaks at the Ellipse in Washington, Trump stumbles in Pennsylvania

President Joe Biden drew the ire of Republicans after comments he made during Tuesday night’s Voto Latino conference call, where his language appeared to refer to supporters of former President Donald Trump as “garbage.”

“Recently, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage,'” Biden said, according to a video shared on CNN.

He then called Puerto Ricans “good, decent and honorable people,” before adding, “The only trash I see there are his supporters.”

The comment was followed by: “His demonization of Latinos is baseless and un-American. It is completely contrary to everything we have done, everything we have been.”

Republicans were quick to respond to the remark, comparing it to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 “basket of deplorables” comment.

Sen. Marco Rubio delivered the message to Trump on stage during the campaign in Allentown, Philadelphia.

Trump responded: “Remember, Hilary said ‘deplorable.’

“It didn’t work out,” he continued. “I think trash is worse, right?”

Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded by saying, “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris hate America and don’t deserve another four years. “Kamala must answer for this heinous attack on tens of millions of Americans.”

The new controversy comes a week after the election and on the night Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her closing campaign message at the Ellipse in Washington

“The President called hateful rhetoric at Madison Square Garden rally ‘garbage,'” a White House spokesman said in a statement.

A transcript of the speeches provided to ABC News by the White House includes an apostrophe at the end of the word “supporter,” but it is unclear from video of Biden’s speeches whether the president meant the word in the possessive form.

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

Biden responded shortly thereafter with a post on X in which he said he had just called “hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico from a Trump supporter” “garbage.”

-Justin R. Gomez of ABC News