Tracey Nearmy/Pool/Reuters
Former Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday evening defended the media and the judicial branch from what he called “corrosive” and “dangerous” attacks on their legitimacy. Speaking at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., while accepting an award from the Bipartisan Policy Center, the ex-VP did not mention President Trump by name, but made not-so-subtle references to his string of attacks on mainstream media outlets as well as judges with whom he has disagreed. “What worries me the most,” Biden said, is the “almost drumbeat of denigration of the institutional structures that govern us.” He elaborated that “when you delegitimize the courts, you delegitimize the legislative body. It's corrosive and it it makes it impossible to reach compromise.” Trump infamously attacked the legitimacy of the federal judge who struck down his anti-refugee executive order; and during the 2016 campaign, he suggested an American judge of Mexican heritage could not adequately oversee his Trump University court case. Additionally, Biden said, “To question the actual legitimacy of a free press is one of the most dangerous things out there. The degree that we depart and denigrate our institutions and the fourth estate, I think we really, honest to God, honest to God, weaken our ability for self-government," said Biden. "We undermine it and become weaker and not stronger.” Late last month, Trump infamously called the mainstream media “enemies of the American people.”