On Friday night, former CIA operative Bob Baer slammed President Donald Trump and compared his “dog whistle politics” to those of Adolf Hitler.

It happened during a panel discussion on the New Zealand terrorist attack and Trump’s downplaying the rise of white nationalism.

Juliette Kayyam said Trump’s words today on white nationalism and invasions was not an accident.

“This is a consistent feature of the president of taking one thing that say an African-American or a Muslim or an immigrant does and imploding that into a national emergency and then refusing to look at the totality of circumstances of the threat that right-wing extremism poses to us and sort of saying maybe the guy was crazy or we don’t know what he really believed,” the former Dept. Secretary of Homeland Security under Barack Obama said.

She continued on: “The president knows exactly what he’s doing. I cannot get into his heart, but what I can say is that the failure to condemn this from the top as compared to say what the New Zealand prime minister did gives a sense of acceptance if not lack of condemnation to those who believe it. ”

Host Erin Burnett then asked Baer what the purpose was behind Trump’s remarks.

“He’s appealing to his base,” Baer said matter-of-factly. “This is dog whistle politics and it is racism. You can’t describe it any other way.”

Baer then said this: “When he called immigrants animals it was the same as Adolf Hitler used to call foreigners animals… It’s the same politics. It’s neo-Nazism. He may not advocate violence, but for a lot of people that listen to him as Juliette said, its an incitement to violence.”

Watch above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]

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