(CNN) Vice President Joe Biden denounced Donald Trump's proposed foreign policy on Monday, repudiating the presumptive GOP nominee's embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin and suggesting his policies on Muslims could foster extremism.
"Our leadership does not spring from some inherent American magic. It never has. We've earned it over and over again through hard work, discipline, good judgment," Biden said during an afternoon address at a foreign policy conference in Washington. The event was focused on setting the national security agenda for the next commander in chief.
Biden's remarks to the Center for a New American Security didn't mention the real estate mogul by name, but the allusions to Trump were plain.
"Our ability to lead by example and draw partners to our side -- that's what has always been America's greatest capability, not empty bluster," Biden said. "Not a sense of entitlement that fundamentally disrespects our partners. Not an attitude, insecurity of a bully. The United States cannot afford to draw back from our responsibilities now. There's simply too much at stake."
Trump's praise of Putin -- he's called the Russian president "a leader, unlike what we have in this country" -- also came under fire in Biden's speech.
"Embracing Putin at a time of renewed Russian aggression I believe will call into question America's longstanding commitment to Europe whole, free and at peace," Biden said in his remarks, adding it also isn't appropriate to "dust off the Cold War playbook."
The border wall that Trump has promised between the United States and Mexico, paired with negative rhetoric about immigrants, could reverse progress in the Western Hemisphere, Biden predicted, allowing "a return of anti-Americanism, a corrosive rift throughout our hemisphere."
The vice president, along with President Barack Obama, endorsed Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton more than a week ago but has yet to appear on the campaign trail for the former secretary of state.
The first joint Obama-Clinton campaign appearance was postponed from last Wednesday after the terror attack in Orlando. But Obama nonetheless chastised Trump from Washington, declaring after a meeting with his National Security Council that the businessman's proposed ban on Muslims was harmful and un-American.
Biden repeated that assessment on Monday, broadening his criticism to include Trump's suggested revival of harsh interrogation techniques that Obama prohibited when he took office.
"Adopting the tactics of our enemies -- using torture, threatening to kill innocent family members, indiscriminately bombing civilian populations -- that not only violates our values, it's deeply deeply damaging to our security," Biden said. "There are 1.4 billion Muslims in the world. Some of the rhetoric I'm hearing sounds designed to radicalize all 1.4 billion."
"Wielding the politics of fear and intolerance, like the proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States, profiling Muslim-Americans, slandering entire religious communities as complicit in terrorism, calls into question America's status as the greatest Democracy in the world," Biden said.
He argued that Trump's platform "doesn't make the situation better, it makes it worse" and insisted it "plays into the very narrative of the extremists."
"Why in God's name are we giving them what they want?" Biden asked. "We're so much better than that."