CHICAGO (AP) — Former President Joe Biden warned on Tuesday that President Donald Trump has “taken a hatchet” to Social Security, weighing in on a critical issue for millions of Americans as the 82-year-old Democrat briefly returned to the national stage.

Breaking with tradition in these far from normal times, Joe Biden today to the stage in Chicago to take swipes at Donald Trump in his first public speech since leaving the White House earlier this year.

Joe Biden has used his first speech since leaving office to criticise the Trump administration's welfare policies. The ex-US president told a conference in Chicago that the government had "taken a hatchet" to Social Security,