“They are trying to, in their most illegitimate … but rational way, they’re trying to destroy a presidency,” he said in the episode of Moby Pod.

“What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to kill me, knowing that it will be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle, and so therefore destroying a presidency in that way,” he said, adding that they want him to relapse to drug abuse.

“It’s not about me,” he continued, adding that “these people are just sad, very, very sick people that have most likely just faced traumas in their lives that they’ve decided that they are going to turn into an evil that they decide that they’re going to inflict on the rest of the world”. He also accused conservative news outlets of “harassing” him.

Mr Biden added: “I’m gonna survive it clean and sober, is because I am not gonna let these [expletive], OK, use me as just another example of why people in recovery are never gonna be OK, never to be trusted, they’re all degenerates.”