Pharmaceutical multi-millionaire Vivek Ramaswamy in protest against US President Joe Biden calling Donald Trump’s supporters “garbage” has gone picking trash with the crew of garbage truck.

“We’re not garbage, we’re patriots recycling the American Dream,” he posted on X with a photo of him on the job in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Thursday.

“Proud to be rolling up in a garbage truck to a Trump campaign event in North Carolina shortly. Going to clean up some actual trash on the streets first,” he wrote.

Ramaswamy, who ran for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination but dropped out to support Trump, put on a yellow trash collector’s vest over a teeshirt with Oscar the Grouch, a children’s cartoon character who lives in a garbage can.

He took a crash course from the trash collectors on operating the truck’s compactor and went to work.

The protest was against Biden’s remark, in which he stated: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his (Trump’s) supporters. His demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American”.

That remark trashing Trump’s backers was set off by a racist joke comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made at the Madison Square Garden rally that Puerto Rico is “literally a floating island of garbage”.

The Caribbean island is a US territory with a Spanish-speaking Latino population.

Trump, who traded his tailored jacket for a trash collector’s vest and took a run on a garbage truck on Wednesday, came to the rally wearing it.

In an interview with the New York Post, Ramaswamy admitted that he and Trump came on their private planes and “don’t try to pretend like we’re something we’re not”.

“Actually, to the contrary,” he said, “I don’t care whether you’re, you know, the owner of a private jet or the operator or driver of a dump truck. We’re all equal as Americans, as fellow citizens. And I think that’s what our side sees versus the Democratic side.”

Biden’s comment had echoes of Hillary Clinton calling Trump’s supporters “deplorables” when she ran against him as the Democratic Party candidate in 2016.

That turned off many in the working class irretrievably against the Democratic Party.

Harris, who has hesitated to criticise Biden, chastised him over this: “Let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”