Former President Joe Biden expressed alarm Thursday about attacks on the rule of law and threats to civil rights under President Donald Trump in some of his most pointed criticism about the new administration since leaving office.
Biden, speaking to the National Bar Association in Chicago, did not mention Trump by name but his intended target was clear during remarks that only ran about 20 minutes.
“You can’t sugarcoat it. These are dark days,” Biden told the crowd of nearly 1,100 members of the predominantly Black legal organization.
The remarks echoed, at least in tone, some of his previous comments about Trump, portraying him as a threat to democracy and the rule of law.
“We are, in my view, at such a moment in American history, reflected in every cruel executive outreach, every rollback of basic freedoms, every erosion of long-standing, established precedent,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Biden also criticized the administration for trying to “erase truth” and faulted Congress for “sitting on the sidelines” and failing to check the authority of the executive branch.
“My friends, we need to face the hard truth of this administration, and that it has been to ease all the gains we’ve made in my administration,” Biden went on. “To erase history rather than making it. To erase fairness, equality, to erase justice itself. And that’s not hyperbole. That’s a fact.”
Calling the administration “cruel,” he pointed to “immigrants who are in this country legally ... getting dragged away in handcuffs.” And he criticized the administration’s attacks on law firms and media companies.
