RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: The leader of the free world is away with the fairies. Biden is toast.

Last night’s US presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia, made a bar fight in the Bronx between two incontinent retirees look decent.

Biden and Trump reminded me of Statler and Waldorf, the quarrelsome elders in the front row of the Muppets balcony.

This political horror show made me long for the dignity of the previous evening’s depressing Sunak-Starmer slanging match in Nottingham. Unexalting doesn’t do it justice.

From the moment Biden walked onto the stage and waved to a nonexistent studio audience, it was terrifyingly clear that the leader of the free world is out with the fairies.

If the President had been a racehorse at Ascot last week, the stewards would have put him out of his misery with a single shot to the temple.

The game’s over, Joe.

I have long believed that Biden will not contest the next election. From what I have seen of the post-race analysis, the Democrats have concluded the same.

He was like Tony Soprano’s Uncle Junior: he walked around in a robe, drooling, and not only acted ga-ga, but was clinically a full-fledged character.

Biden couldn’t string a coherent sentence together as she coughed from the start like Theresa May during her disastrous keynote speech at the Tory conference, which marked the beginning of the end for her unremarkable premiership.

It’s ridiculous that the Democratic spin machine tried to pretend that the reason Biden hadn’t been seen in public in over a week was because he was suffering from a bad cold.

Earlier, we had learned that he was preparing for the debate at Camp David, the presidential retreat. You had to wonder why the president would need to go into purdah to prepare for a few softball questions from sympathetic CNN anchors – one of whom had previously described Donald Trump as “literally Hitler.”

But Biden couldn’t rise to the occasion, or even figure out where he was. His rambling responses to everything from the shameful flight from Afghanistan to the illegal migration crisis at America’s southern border were as incomprehensible as they were insulting.

Before the debate, the Trump camp had already announced that Biden was pumped full of performance-enhancing drugs to get through the night.

If you were thinking about Viagra, or even a few pints of Lemsip, think again. My bet is on Imodium to make sure he got through the 90 minutes on CNN without another unfortunate toilet incident.

This debate wasn’t so much about a car crash, but about the multi-vehicle collision at the climax of the original Blues Brothers film.

Biden’s toast. Dead Man barely walks. But the Democrats’ problem is how to get rid of him. They can’t risk replacing him with his vice president, the dimwitted, grinning Kamala Harris. Houston, we have a problem.

Perhaps the fact that California’s muscular governor, Gavin Newson, was busy in the spin room after the debate points to Plan B.

Creepy Uncle Joe receives a farewell gift at the party as if from a highwayman and Kamala is taken to a side room where she receives an offer she cannot refuse.

The fact is, as this column has argued in recent years, NOT ONLY America deserves better than the current clown show. Newsom should be the Democrats’ presidential candidate against Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, a new generation who offers a clear choice between a big state, high taxes, a woke government and free-spirited liberalism with low taxes.

What’s holding up this confrontation is the sheer vanity of Biden and Trump, who still thinks he got robbed last time.

Yes, Trump makes a lot of good noises about taxes, about the border, about law and order, about Iran, etc. But he’s had his turn.

The post-game quarterbacks on Republican-friendly Fox News enthusiastically described last night as a victory for Trump. Which was probably the case because of Biden’s cringe-inducing meltdown.

But honestly? Trump kicked a cripple. It was horrible to see. If Basket Case Biden is Uncle Junior, then Trump came across as Phil Leotardo, Tony’s resentful rival from New York across the river.

Trump’s goal is to take revenge, albeit with some justification. Biden has weaponized the state to deliver justice to Trump. Not that it did him much good.

Bad Orange Man is ahead in the polls where it matters. My sister, who lives in the key swing state of Michigan and works in finance, tells me that the dealmakers in her office are all backing Trump after switching to Biden last time.

Much of America yearns for Trump’s booming pre-Covid economy. The Democrats’ obsession with Net Zero has alienated blue-collar union members in “working states” like Pennsylvania and Michigan. Trump’s support is huge among traditional auto workers in Detroit.

He is also very popular among black and Hispanic voters, putting him in pole position in November.

And yet. The story of last night was Biden’s complete and utter implosion. But Trump played his part in turning what should have been a serious exercise in representative democracy into little more than a mud-wrestling shouting match.

Two men who should have retired long ago and headed to Cocoon Central now found themselves bickering over who had the lowest golf handicap. They had no ambition whatsoever to lead the free world.

Sorry, but as someone who loves the US, I left last night’s debate thinking that America deserves better than this. The free world deserves better than this. The only winners last night were Putin, China, and the ayatollahs.

What I missed, due to the lack of a CNN studio audience, was the daring British grandee Robert Blackstock, the standout performer on Wednesday night’s Sunak/Starmer show, asking the candidates:

“Are you two really the best we have?”

It’s the same question Central America must ask itself today.