By ABC News North America bureau chief Jade Macmillan in Harrisburg, Pennsylania
Photo: AFP / CHIP SOMODEVILLA
Analysis - Three months after his dramatic exit from the US election, Joe Biden was not supposed to be a central figure in the final sprint between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
The president had largely been sidelined from his deputy's campaign by the time he lined up with other residents in his home state of Delaware to cast his ballot this week.
Asked whether it was a bittersweet moment ahead of the election he was supposed to be contesting, he insisted it was "just sweet".
But within days, the president made the very type of gaffe that put his candidacy into question in the first place.
Biden was responding to a widely condemned joke about Puerto Rico being a "floating island of garbage", made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally.
The official White House transcript lays out how the president's remarks began to unravel.
"I don't - I - I don't know the Puerto Rican that - that I know - or a Puerto Rico, where I'm fr- - in my home state of Delaware, they're good, decent, honourable people," he said.
But it was the next line of commentary that drew immediate attention.
"The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter's - his - his demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American."
Note the transcript's placement of the apostrophe in the word "supporter's".
The president argues he was referring to what he calls Hinchcliffe's "hateful rhetoric", and not the former president's backers more generally.
Donald Trump did all he could to highlight Joe Biden's "garbage" comment. Photo: AFP / CHIP SOMODEVILLA
But the Trump campaign was quick to pounce. Florida senator Marco Rubio interrupted a campaign rally in Pennsylvania to deliver the "breaking news" of Biden's remarks, eliciting boos from the crowd.
"That's terrible," Trump responded. "Remember Hillary, she said "deplorable"... that didn't work out. 'Garbage' I think is worse, right?"
Trump was making a comparison to Hillary Clinton's infamous 2016 comment that some of his supporters were a "basket of deplorables".
He followed up with a rally in North Carolina where he argued Biden had "finally said what he and Kamala really think of our supporters".
But that wasn't enough for Trump the showman.
At his next campaign stop in Wisconsin, he emerged from his plane dressed in a fluoro orange vest before walking across the tarmac and onto a rubbish truck emblazoned with Trump campaign signage.
"How do you like my garbage truck?" he asked through the window of the passenger seat. "This truck is in honour of Kamala and Joe Biden."
Cutting through competing controversies
The final few days ahead of any big election become a frenzy as candidates pick up the pace and the media's interest ramps right up.
While the twin "garbage" controversies have certainly created a distraction on both sides, it's not clear whether either will have any meaningful impact on the campaign.
But Biden's comments, on a call with a Latino voting group, were made around the same time that his vice-president was making one of her biggest speeches since securing the Democratic nomination.
Kamala Harris delivered her "closing argument" before tens of thousands of supporters in Washington DC. Photo: AFP
Harris made a symbolic choice in delivering what was billed as her "closing argument" from the same spot near the White House where Trump rallied his supporters ahead of the 6 January attack on the Capitol.
"Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other," she told the tens of thousands of people gathered around the National Mall.
"I will always listen to you, even if you don't vote for me."
Harris has spent considerable energy trying to reach conservative voters who would normally vote Republican but can't stomach Trump.
At her rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania this week, I met Justin Warren - a "life-long Republican" who's thrown his support behind the vice-president.
He described Biden's comments as a "terrible statement".
"Life-long Republican" Justin Warren says he's voting for Kamala Harris. Photo: ABC News / Cameron Schwarz
"I'm not going to try to explain why he would say that, you know it could have been a slip or a gaffe on his part. That's wrong."
However, he accepted the vice-president's response when she said she "strongly disagreed" with criticism of people based on who they vote for. And he didn't think it would hurt her efforts to reach more voters on his side of politics.
"I think silently there are a lot of Republicans that feel the same way I do," he said.
"They're just afraid to speak out."
'A long history of hate'
Democrats had earlier seized on the Hinchcliffe joke, using it to try to connect with Latino voters in the seven swing states where the election is likely to be decided.
Trump's team made the relatively rare move of issuing a statement after the Madison Square Garden rally to say the comedian's views didn't reflect those of the former president.
Trump later claimed he didn't know Hinchcliffe, and that he'd done more for Puerto Rico than any other president. But he didn't publicly condemn the joke and he defended the rally more generally as a "love fest".
People living on the island territory can't vote in presidential elections.
But there's a significant population of people with Puerto Rican heritage living in areas like the majority Latino city of Allentown, Pennsylvania, where Trump campaigned amid the fallout.
Some of his supporters there - including a woman with family in Puerto Rico - pointed out that it wasn't Trump himself who'd made the "garbage" comment.
While Christian Rice, a 23-year-old who was dressed in an American flag jumpsuit, argued it wouldn't shift the needle given how baked in views of Trump already were.
"Nobody's voting for Trump because they think he's a super well-spoken, very respectful guy," he told me.
"He's a guy who says his mind and people around him say their minds. I don't think it's beneficial, but I don't think it's going to change anything dramatically in the election cycle."
A small group of Latino protesters marching outside the event didn't see it that way.
"These recent comments, it's just a long history of hate," demonstrator Armando Jimenez said. "They're saying out loud the quiet part."
One to watch: Troubling signs ahead?
The chaotic aftermath of the 2020 election has loomed large over preparations for next week.
Trump has spent years claiming election fraud cost him the presidency. That's despite exhaustive investigations that found no evidence to support it.
Now, Trump and some of his allies look to be laying the groundwork to make a similar claim if he's defeated.
Flashpoints have already emerged. Trump has levelled cheating claims in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, where investigations are underway into suspicious voter registration applications.
Local officials insist the detection of the potentially problematic forms shows their systems are working.
Security has been stepped up at election offices, including in Arizona's Maricopa County, where armed protesters gathered in 2020.
And concerns have been raised about Trump supporters trying to block the certification of election results at either a state or local level.
If the outcome is close, legal challenges from both sides could continue for months afterwards. So while we're in the final leg of the race, the finish line might be further away than it looks.
- ABC
