US election 2024: Charlie Kirk suffers ‘self-own’ as he makes 'garbage' comment at Tucker Carlson event

Turning Point USA founder and conservative activist Charlie Kirk has endured a number of awkward moments in recent weeks – from heated exchanges in a video for US media platform Jubilee to falling for a comedian pretending to be a Trump supporter – and now, he’s suffered a “self-own” by calling a room full of Republicans “garbage”.

Yep, the word which has been flung around plenty of times near the end of the US presidential election campaign had another outing on Thursday night, when Kirk made an appearance at former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s event in Arizona – the same event which saw presidential candidate Donald Trump fantasise about critic and ex-Wyoming representative Liz Cheney being shot at.

“The current president of the United States thinks you’re a bunch of garbage. Well, look around, Mr President, because there’s a lot of garbage here tonight,” he said.

Of course, Kirk is referring to comments made by Joe Biden earlier this week, when he hopped on a virtual Voto Latino call to describe Puerto Ricans in his home state of Delaware as “good, decent, honourable people”, before adding that “the only garbage I see floating out there” is “his [Trump’s] supporters”.

That came off the back of comedian Tony Hinchcliffe telling Trump supporters at a rally in Madison Square Gardens on Sunday that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage” – a “joke” which a senior adviser to the Trump campaign Danielle Alvarez said “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign”.

Biden’s gaffe, however, in addition to angering backers of the Republican presidential candidate, apparently caused problems within the White House, with the Associated Press reporting that the president’s press office altered the transcript from “supporters” to “supporter’s”, despite concerns from official stenographers.

AP said aides claimed the tweak points to “Biden criticising Hinchcliffe, not the millions of Americans who are supporting Trump for president”.

The outgoing Potus later took to Twitter/X to state he was referring to “the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage”.

Trump has nevertheless seized the opportunity to capitalise on Biden’s blunder, even going so far as to ride in a garbage truck to really milk the slip-up for all it’s worth.

Yet even before the outcry over Biden and Hinchliffe’s comments, Trump himself was rambling about garbage when he said America is “the garbage can for the world” last month.

In other words, both sides of the US political divide are literally talking rubbish.

Though the latest instance of the word being used, in the form of Kirk’s comments at Carlson’s event, has seen the commentator ridiculed on Twitter:

Oops.

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