Fighting talk: Fired-up Biden shows gloves are off against loser' Trump

This time it's personal. Last Friday Joe Biden tore into his predecessor Donald Trump as never before. He brimmed with anger, disdain and contempt. He apparently had to stop himself from swearing. So much for "when they go low, we go high" - and plenty of Democrats will be just fine with that.

- David Smith

If Biden, 81, was seeking to jolt his half-conscious 2024 re-election campaign into life, this may have done the trick. The palpable loathing of Trump took a good 10 or 20 years off him. Keep hating like this and he might do a Benjamin Button all the way to election day.

Trump's failure to act as a violent mob stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, despite the pleas of staff and family members, was "among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history", Biden said, noting that Trump went on to lose 60 court cases that took him back to the truth "that I had won the election and he was a loser".

It was a jab to the ribs, since Trump hates nothing more than being branded a "loser".

The president went on to recall how Trump has called the insurrectionists "patriots" and claimed there was a "lot of love" on 6 January. At that, Biden shook his head, blinked and let out a gasp of disbelief, as if stunned anew by the assertion. "The rest of the nation, including law enforcement, saw a lot of hate and violence," he said.