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"What worries me
the most," Biden said late on Wednesday, is the "almost drumbeat
of denigration of the institutional structures that govern us."
"When you delegitimize the courts, you delegitimize the
legislative body. It's corrosive. and it makes it impossible to
reach compromise," he said in Washington, where he was receiving
the Patriot Award for political courage and leadership from the
Bipartistan Policy Center, ABC reported.
Biden did not mention Trump, who has called U.S. Judge James
Robart a "so-called judge" whose "ridiculous" opinion "takes law
enforcement away from our country." Trump's remarks came after
the judge ordered a temporary lifting of the president's travel
and immigration ban in February.
Biden, who served two terms as vice president under Democratic
President Barack Obama, received the award at the Newseum, a
museum dedicated to journalism and First Amendment freedoms.
Trump has called the media an "enemy of the American people" and
often refers to negative coverage of his administration as "fake
news."
"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," Biden said. "We undermine it and become weaker
and not stronger."
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by
Bernadette Baum)
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