By CCN.com: The Dow crashed toward a brutal pullback on Thursday after the index’s third-largest stock cratered following another bout of earnings mayhem. Meanwhile, the US presidential contest is heating up, with Joe Biden vowing to “save the world” from Donald Trump, and the president nakedly mocking the ex-VP’s intelligence.

Dow Gets Pummeled as Third-Largest Stock Drops Brutal Earnings Shock

The Dow Jones Industrial Average collapsed more than 250 points after the bell but managed to pare those losses heading into the afternoon session. By 1:24 pm ET, the DJIA had lost 100 points or 0.38 percent to trade at 26,496.81. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both assembled slight rallies, climbing 0.1 percent and 0.28 percent to round out an uneven day for US stocks.

Earlier, a suddenly-vicious earnings season battered the Dow. The index’s third-largest component, 3M, performed downright disastrously during the first quarter, and the outlook remains so ugly that the Post-it note manufacturer revealed that it would slash 2,000 jobs in a desperate bid to cut costs.

“The first quarter was a disappointing start to the year for 3M,” Chief Executive Officer Mike Roman said in the statement, which revealed that 3M’s earnings had missed by the Bloomberg consensus estimate by the largest margin on record.

3M shares plummeted by more than 10.6 percent.

Joe Biden Enters Race to ‘Save the World’ from Donald Trump

Elsewhere, the 2020 US presidential election appears to be heating up.

After procrastinating the formal start to his candidacy for months, former Vice President Joe Biden finally entered the race with a surprising sense of urgency, warning that the next 24 hours could set the stage for a successful White House run or plunge his campaign into a hole out of which it might never recover.

The stakes, the 76-year-old political veteran said, are enormous. How enormous? Biden preened that world leaders are “begging” him to “save the world” from Donald Trump.

“I get calls from people all over the world — world leaders are calling me — and they’re almost begging me to do this, to save the country, save the world,” Biden told donors, according to sources cited in Politico.

Biden enters the primary as the presumptive front-runner, the ideal center-left candidate to dominate the moderate lane as his far-left rivals divvy up the progressive fringe. Just hours into his candidacy, he already ranks third on FiveThirtyEight’s endorsement scoreboard and will likely overtake Cory Booker for first before the end of the day.

He’s also the most stock market-friendly Democratic candidate, according to an RBC Capital Markets survey of Wall Street insiders.

While some, such as market analyst Candy Matheson, have warned that a Biden presidency would annihilate the stock market rally that flourished throughout Trump’s first term, moderate voters might welcome a return to Obama-era political discourse, even if it does shave a few points off their retirement portfolios versus a second Trump term.

Trump, for his part, remains confident that the heated US economy and booming Dow Jones Industrial Average will propel him to a 2020 victory, no matter whether squares off against “Sleepy Joe” Biden or someone more radical like “Crazy” Bernie Sanders.

President Nakedly Mock’s Biden’s Intelligence Ahead of ‘Nasty’ Primary

True to bombastic form, Donald Trump welcomed Biden to the contest, tweeting on Thursday that he’s signed up for a “nasty” primary fight against some progressive candidates with “some very sick & demented ideas.”

Welcome to the race Sleepy Joe. I only hope you have the intelligence, long in doubt, to wage a successful primary campaign. It will be nasty – you will be dealing with people who truly have some very sick & demented ideas. But if you make it, I will see you at the Starting Gate! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2019

“I only hope you have the intelligence, long in doubt, to wage a successful primary campaign,” Trump said, perhaps previewing how he intends to mock Biden during a potential general election fight.

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