‘Feeble, desperate, mentally unfit’: Biden changes tack to mock Trump

The Republican contender lowered the tone of electoral politics in 2016 - now the Democratic president has left the high road to take him on at his own game

With November set to be one of the most consequential elections in US history, it would be understandable if Donald Trump and Joe Biden reached for soaring, lofty rhetoric: if they attempted to match the high-minded ideals of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the nation's founding fathers.

American voters, and the country's political class, are long used to Trump's insult-laden and often crude rhetoric. Everything Joe Biden touches turns to shit," Trump said in Georgia earlier this month, during a rally at which he also also mocked Biden's stutter.