A bitter feud between U.S. President Donald Trump and top Democrat Nancy Pelosi boiled over at his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, with Trump denying her a handshake and Pelosi ripping apart a copy of his remarks behind his back.

If elections are won by defiant showmanship alone, Donald Trump will waltz to a second term in November.

In the most politicized State of the Union address in modern times, the President took the choreography of an annual America ritual to new levels on Tuesday night at a fraught moment in the nation's history.
And he spelled out a daunting warning to a band of Democrats who couldn't even cobble together a winner in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, that he's an effective, relentless political communicator who will stop at nothing to win.
In two stunning moments that book-ended the evening, Trump, as he began his speech, turned his back on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's outstretched hand in a snub that encapsulated their boiling bad blood. Then, after he wrapped up, Pelosi, channeling her disgusted and outraged Democratic members,  ostentatiously tore up the speech in full view of the cameras, in a sure-to-go viral moment that showed she can do theatrics too.
Trump rattled through the night in a mood of huge self-confidence, taking political risks a more conventional politician would have spurned. It wasn't the performance of a President shamed and cowed by impeachment ahead of a vote in the GOP-led Senate expected to acquit him.