Washington (CNN) FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday that white supremacy presents a "persistent" and "pervasive" threat to the United States, breaking from President Donald Trump, who has sidestepped questions of whether white nationalists present a growing problem.

"The danger. I think, of white supremacists, violent extremism or another kind of extremism is of course significant," Wray said at a House hearing. "We assess that it is a persistent, pervasive threat. We tackle it both through our joint terrorism task forces on the domestic terrorism side as well as through our civil rights program on the civil side through hate crime enforcement."

Wray also spoke out against hate crimes and was asked by Democrats what the FBI was doing to crack down on hate crimes, which they say have ticked up during Trump's presidency.

"We are determined not to tolerate hate-filled violence in our communities, so we're going to aggressively investigate those cases," Wray said, adding that there has been an increase in "the reporting of hate crimes," but that this doesn't automatically mean more hate crimes were happening. FBI efforts to encourage the public to report hate crimes could be yielding benefits, he said.

These comments aren't exactly in line with what Trump has said about the topic of white nationalism. Trump, who appointed Wray in 2017, has downplayed the danger of white nationalism and even praised some of the Nazi sympathizers who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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