Biden wastes no time laying into Trump as he comes out swinging in fiery State of the Union address

President Joe Biden had barely started speaking from the House of Representatives rostrum when he laid into his predecessor and likely 2024 election opponent, former president Donald Trump, for threatening to allow Russia to run roughshod over the democracies of the West while simultaneously castigating the Republican-led Congress for failing to authorise more defence aid to Ukraine.

Invoking Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s speech in 1941 warning of Hitler’s armies being “on the march” in Europe, Mr Biden said he’d come to the same chamber to tell the nation that it is facing an “unprecedented moment in the history of the Union” and to “wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment“.

“What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond,” he said.

“If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not. But Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons it needs to defend itself”.

The president stressed that Ukraine isn’t asking for Americans to give their lives overseas, and said he is working to keep American soldiers from having to fight there. But he warned that funding for Ukraine is being blocked by “those who want us to walk away from our leadership in the world,” referring to Republicans who oppose aid to Kyiv because it would be a political win for the president.

Recalling how the late Republican president Ronald Reagan had told then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall in a moment of global leadership, Mr Biden called out Mr