Eric Holder Eric Himpton HolderThe Hill's Campaign Report: Trump's rally risk | Biden ramps up legal team | Biden hits Trump over climate policy Biden campaign forming 'special litigation' team ahead of possible voting battle Pompeo, Engel poised for battle in contempt proceedings MORE in a new interview slams Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump's policies on refugees are as simple as ABCs Ocasio-Cortez, Velázquez call for convention to decide Puerto Rico status White House officials voted by show of hands on 2018 family separations: report MORE, calling him “racially insensitive” and “racially unaware.”

"I think he has done some things both in his career and as attorney general that I think have been racially insensitive," the former attorney general told Politico's "Off Message" podcast, referring to Sessions.

"And there are times when I think he is racially unaware."

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Holder listed Sessions's decision to reverse an Obama-era memo ordering federal prosecutors to refrain from charging defendants with certain offenses that carried mandatory minimum sentences as an example of the attorney general being "racially unaware."

Holder also called Sessions's moves on voting rights, criminal justice reform and protections for members of the LQBTQ community "distressing."

Holder, however, resisted calling Sessions a racist, saying he needs “hard and fast proof” to do that.

He also said the Trump administration is empowering white nationalist groups.

"He has given license, however, to a small part of the electorate of the population to say things that they might not have said before, to do things that they might not have done before," Holder said, adding that Trump has not lived up to the "moral tone" Americans expect of their leaders.

Holder told Politico that neo-Nazis and white nationalists during the Obama administration "didn’t feel empowered in a way that I think they do now.”

He added that Trump is "partially" responsible for the change.