Joe Biden: Attacks on news media, courts are dangerous

Former Vice President Joe Biden defended the courts and the news media, saying attacks against those institutions are dangerous.

Biden was speaking Wednesday night at the Newseum in Washington, where he accepted an award from the Bipartistan Policy Center.

News outlets report that the Democrat didn’t mention Republican President Donald Trump by name but said he was worried by the “almost drumbeat of denigration of the institutional structures that govern us.”

Biden said trying to delegitimize the courts is “corrosive” and makes it impossible to compromise. And he said questioning the legitimacy of the free press is “one of the most dangerous things out there.”

Trump has criticized judges and rulings in the past. He also frequently criticizes what he calls “fake news” and once wrote in a tweet that the news media “is the enemy of the American people.”