His poll numbers plummeting and Covid cases soaring, President Joe Biden began the new year desperate for a new narrative.

On Thursday, Donald Trump's "bruised ego" may have handed it to him.

In a forceful speech roundly described as his most powerful since he took office, Biden pinned responsibility for the horrors of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack on Trump, painting him as a sore loser whose inability to embrace the truth of his defeat only deepened the political chasm dividing Americans.

"The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He has done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interest as more important than his country's interest, than America's interest," Biden said of Trump. "And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution, he can't accept he lost."