It feels as if almost every American presidential election is billed as the ‘nastiest in US history’. Steerpike, contrarian that he is, would like to reject this lazy media characterisation. Politics is always nasty and American politics has its own particular viciousness.

When it comes to the likely Trump vs Biden rematch in 2024, however, all bets on civility are truly off. It was deeply unpleasant in 2020 and will be even worse this time.

Here’s Donald Trump in Pennsylvania calling his rival, the President of the United States, a ‘dumb son of a b****’.

Not satisfied with dissing Biden, Trump also called Ron DeSantis a ‘son of a b****’ – though he rather tellingly left out the word ‘dumb’.

The MAGA crowd lapped it up of course; they always do. They come to be entertained by Trump’s willingness to shock. And Trump loves to give fans what they want.

Trump also did his now familiar riff, another fan favourite, on ‘the Biden crime family’, bitterly contrasting his own treatment at the hand of the Justice Department with that of the Democratic Commander-in-Chief.

‘They waited two and a half, almost three years, so that they could bring this up right in the middle of my presidential election because it’s election interference. They’re crooked people,’ he said.

‘You know they’re not indicting me; they’re indicting you. I just happen to be standing in their way that’s all it is.’

‘Until the FBI, DOJ, and IRS hand over every scrap of paper they have on the Biden Crime Family’s corrupt businesses dealings. We have to know, and the public deserves to know.’

The Republican Oversight Committee will continue its investigations into the Biden family’s dodgy dealings but their investigations are not nearly as advanced as the ‘lawfare’ against his predecessor in the Oval Office.

It’s extraordinary to think that Trump will run the 2024 presidential election with several legal trials not just hanging over him but actually being conducted.

There’s the hoarding of classified documents trial, the tax fiddle hush-money New York trial, the ongoing rape claims from the writer E. Jean Carroll, the Georgia election fiddling claim, and the apparently never-ending investigations into Trump’s complicity in the January 6th riots.

It’s all going to get very, very ugly indeed.