Biden has unleashed on 'loser' Trump. He's finally read the room

The kindest thing President Donald Trump has ever said about his political opponents is that they are “haters” or “losers”. More often, he suggests they are “traitors”, criminals or conspirators. On a near-daily basis he falsely accuses Democrats of “stealing” elections and faking votes. He spent years claiming president Barack Obama wasn’t even a real American. More than once, he accused Democrats of being associates of Jeffrey Epstein – despite the late paedophile having described himself as Trump’s “closest friend for 10 years”.

The rest of the Republican Party typically follows Trump’s example, bombarding their Democratic opponents with the strongest invective imaginable. But from the Democrats’ highly cautious approach, it often appears as though radically different rules apply to their party.

Democrats often act as though they are living in a bygone era, in which politicians were rewarded by voters for politeness, for “reaching across the aisle” and a collegiate attitude toward their rivals. Rather than fight fire with fire, Democrats issue mild-mannered statements, urge Republicans to work with them to pass bipartisan bills and otherwise try to sound like the grown-ups in the room – often to the mounting frustration of their core voters and activists.

New EU border checks should be suspended before peak summer, aviation industry leaders have said, after Brits reported huge delays due to the new Entry/Exit System (EES). 

The system, rolled out fully in April, involves people from the UK having their fingerprints registered and photographs taken to enter certain countries.

The EES is used to enter the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries, mainly in the EU.

For most UK travellers, the process is done at foreign airports.

Severe operational consequences disrupting passengers and putting border authorities, airports and airlines under unsustainable pressure.

Senior figures at three major aviation industry bodies wrote to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission warning waiting times at border control had “increased significantly, now reaching up to five hours”.

Since it’s implementation, the EES has caused travel chaos for Brits.

Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with missiles and drones, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more.

Russia launched a series of strikes on Kyiv, hitting residential ⁠buildings and ⁠triggering ​a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko has said 13 people had been killed, ⁠with about three dozen locations across the city damaged in the attacks.

Many residents took shelter at metro stations after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, issued the first warnings of the attack.

Zelenskyy was forced to cut short a trip to Dublin on Wednesday, citing intelligence reports of a large-scale Russian attack.

Ukraine said on Tuesday it hit one of Russia’s largest satellite communication centers in north Moscow for the second time in just over a week.

Russian president Vladimir Putin also recently admitted Russia is facing fuel shortages after Ukraine launched repeated strikes on oil refineries, while Kyiv notably launched a large-scale attack on Moscow last month.

Sir Keir Starmer’s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan had one big bet at its heart: drones are the future of warfare.

American company Anduril makes the “Seabed Sentry“- a weighted cylinder that uses sensors and AI to monitor what is happening under the sea. They could be used to listen out for spying and sabotage by Russian submarines. They are far cheaper than crewed submarines using traditional sonar.

A dozen of the cylinders can be dropped onto the seabed at a time by an autonomous submarine, with the devices forming a network which communicate between themselves and listens out for undersea activity.

The UK is woefully unprepared with the Royal Navy in a desperate condition. Whoever sits in Downing Street come next September will need to address matters of defence, homeland and cyber defence especially, with urgency.

Officials have drawn up contingency plans to cut further green levies from energy bills if prices remain high this winter, The i Paper has been told.

Several options are now circulating among Burnham’s transition team who are believed to be weighing up how to deliver on that pledge. A Treasury source said work on a package was ongoing to help with rising costs.

Burnham could remove remaining green levies from energy bills, funded through general taxation instead.

One proposal would be to raise the bank surcharge from its current 3 per cent.

Replace stamp duty, loosen fiscal rules and tax the capital gains uplift on inherited assets.

A written statement published by the Chancellor said the remaining sum would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanced way”.

The coronation of Andy Burnham is fraught with dangers. Never will a prime minister have arrived in Downing Street with so little scrutiny of what he wants to do.

Electric flying taxis could be above the streets of London by 2028, a manufacturer has claimed. Here’s what you need to know.

Vertical Aerospace is still testing the aircraft and it will need to be approved by both the approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). But the company says the aim is for air taxis to become as cheap and convenient as ordering an Uber to the airport.

Until now. Joe Biden has broken ranks with his decorous Democratic colleagues, and with the long-standing convention that former US presidents don’t criticise their successors – one that Trump himself never bothered with, of course.

In comments at a Democratic Party fundraising event in Maryland, Biden called Trump a “narcissistic loser” who had brought “brazen and blatant corruption” into his White House. Biden rattled off a list of Trump’s grandiose failures, including his demolition of the East Wing of the White House in a stalled attempt to build a ballroom and his blocked effort to add his name on to the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.

As he reached the end of his list, Biden concluded by noting Trump had even hired “his own pool guy to fix the Reflecting Pool” – which so far has led to peeling paint, water filled with algae and the National Guard deployed around the Washington landmark to disperse people gawping.

Biden was hitting Trump right where it hurts: in his ego. Trump likes to think of himself as a winner, and a master of real estate and renovation. Biden called Trump corrupt – Democrats often do – but crucially he also called him a “loser”. Trump will pay attention to that.

The question is, why has Biden been willing to do what other past presidents generally have not? Barack Obama has criticised Trump’s actions – this week claiming the President had an “obsession” with him and remarking: “I obviously have a room in his head.” But, Obama makes a point of taking the high road, often sticking to veiled insults or broader commentary. At the official opening of his presidential library earlier this month, he spoke in general terms about how there should be “no kings” and “no one is above the law”.

Trump doesn’t play the game. Every living former president attended the unveiling of Obama’s library – but in an unprecedented move, Trump gave the event a miss. He relentlessly insults all of his predecessors. By and large, they grin and bear it.

Part of the answer might lie in the fact that the media punishes Democrats for rudeness that it happily ignores from Republicans. Hillary Clinton uttered the phrase “basket of deplorables” to describe a racist hard-core of Trump’s base, and Republicans and their friendly media have held that against the Democrats ever since. The consensus has been that going on the attack backfires against the party.

Biden, though, might simply not care any more. He is, as we were all reminded throughout the 2024 election campaign, in his 80s now, and his political ambitions are over. Biden notoriously bears a grudge, and he feels – rightly or wrongly – that many in the Democratic Party treated him shabbily when they forced him aside, only to go on to lose the election anyway. Biden is not going to do as he’s told by anyone, any more.

On this occasion, Biden might have judged the public mood better than much of the rest of his party. The outpouring of outrage at Trump and his administration’s atrocities – killing by ICE, Trump’s family enriching themselves by billions, new conflict in the Middle East, and more almost daily – needs to be channeled somewhere, and mild-mannered Democrats look out of touch.

More combative, unconventional candidates have been doing well in the Democratic primaries – including the controversial Graham Platner in Maine and several socialist candidates in New York. Establishment Democrats and the rulebook they cling to are increasingly looking like a relic of the past.

It would be an interesting irony indeed if it took 83-year-old former president Joe Biden, of all people, to finally wake them up to that.