If there was ever any doubt about what the post-election relationship between President-elect Joe Biden and the outgoing president, Donald Trump, was likely to be, the uncertainty was removed earlier today, when Mr. Biden looked straight down the TV camera lens and told his rival:
"You're fired!"
Mr. Biden was, of course, referring to the way Mr. Trump had been dumped out of his office through the machinations of the electoral process, and the ungracious way he has, thus far, refused to concede defeat.
Rather than wait any longer for Mr. Trump to do the right thing, as is required by the democratic process, he told him, again:
"You're fired!"
Senator Mitt Romney spoke about the way Mr. Trump has acted since his defeat, saying that, in these dark days of a growing number of authoritarian states, it was "dangerous" to talk of elections being 'rigged', 'staged', and 'stolen', and the voting system 'corrupt', as this would, no doubt, provide encouragement for regimes abroad to think that they might follow the American model.
Mr. Trump has shaken US politics to its very foundation since taking up his post in 2016, but the end has finally come. Mr. Biden told the nation that the nightmare was over, and it was time to "get back to normal. He had one last message for Mr. Trump:
"You're fired!"
