The last time disgraced ex-Baltimore Raven Ray Rice was on the White House's radar was when his champion football team visited in January 2013 to celebrate its Super Bowl win. This week, however, the words both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden used to describe the running back's brutal treatment of his then-fiancée at an Atlantic City casino earlier this year included "contemptible" and "vicious."

“The president is the father of two daughters. And like any American, he believes that domestic violence is contemptible and unacceptable in a civilized society," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement issued Monday night. "Hitting a woman is not something a real man does, and that’s true whether or not an act of violence happens in the public eye, or, far too often, behind closed doors. Stopping domestic violence is something that’s bigger than football — and all of us have a responsibility to put a stop to it.”

Biden, who was scheduled to deliver a speech at the National Archives to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act on Tuesday, also condemned Rice's behavior and applauded the National Football League for finally doing the right thing by putting Rice on an indefinite suspension.

"Now you can argue they should have done it sooner — they didn't want it. Whatever the reason is, it's happening," Biden told Today host Tamron Hall earlier in the day.

“The one regret I have is we call it ‘domestic violence,’ as if it's a domesticated cat. It is the most vicious form of violence there is, because not only the physical scars that are left, the psychological scars that are left," he added.

Follow Joyce Jones on Twitter: @BETpolitichick.

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 (Photo: AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)