U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has told President-elect Donald Trump to "grow up" and criticized his public spat with the intelligence community.
Biden's remarks come as Trump is slated to receive a formal briefing on January 6 on Russia's alleged cybercampaign to meddle in the U.S. presidential election, claims that the president-elect has cast doubt on.
Biden told PBS NewsHour in an interview on January 5 that it was time for Trump "to be an adult" and said it was "absolutely mindless" for a president not to have confidence in or listen to the intelligence agencies.
The top U.S. intelligence official, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, told a Senate hearing on January 5 that U.S. agencies were more confident than ever that Moscow interfered in the November election.
"I think there is an important distinction here between healthy skepticism, which policymakers...should always have for intelligence, but I think there's a difference between skepticism and disparagement," Clapper said.
The U.S. intelligence community has publicly accused the Russian government of directing the campaign to influence the American electoral process and concluded that the alleged Russian effort was aimed at tilting the election toward Trump.
Both the Russian government and Trump have dismissed that conclusion as absurd.