Reports that Joe Biden is preparing a run for the White House in 2020 seemed to draw a response from Donald Trump on Thursday. The former vice-president would “go down fast and hard, crying all the way”, the president tweeted, if he ever acted on a repeatedly expressed wish to “beat the hell” out of Trump over his comments about women.

Talk of a Biden run for the presidency has persisted since the 2016 campaign, in which it has been claimed he was considered as a last-minute replacement for Hillary Clinton. Biden, who has said he thinks he could have won in 2016, has not counted out a run in the next election. He has also opened two policy organisations and a political action committee. On Thursday he announced a three-point “Plan to Put Work – and Workers – First” and a roster of big-name advisers including senior figures from the Obama administration. The former acting US attorney general Sally Yates, who was fired by Trump for opposing his first travel ban, is on the list.

The former Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus said in a speech in Hong Kong this week that Biden “could be a pretty serious candidate”, although he added that he did not think a Democratic party moving left in opposition to Trump would “embrace” such a centralist figure. Biden, 75, spoke on Tuesday, telling students at an anti-sexual assault event at the University of Miami: “A guy who ended up becoming our national leader said, ‘I can grab a woman anywhere and she likes it.’(theguardian)…[+]