Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) said Tuesday that the close scrutiny of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general was in part due to a “war on whites.”

Brooks made the comments in an appearance on WBHPs “The Morning Show With Toni & Gary,” which was flagged by CNN’s KFILE. Brooks began his response to a question about Democratic opposition to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and Sessions’ support of voter ID laws, by referencing the Voting Rights Act.

The Alabama congressman argued that the VRA treated certain areas “differently” by requiring federal pre-clearance of changes to voting laws in states where there had been a history of voter suppression, until that provision was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013.

“That’s only a tool that the Democrats are using,” he said of VRA pre-clearance.

“It’s really about political power and racial division and what I’ve referred to on occasion as the ‘war on whites,’” he added. “They are trying to motivate the African-American vote to vote-bloc for Democrats by using every ‘Republican is a racist’ tool that they can envision, even if they have to lie about it.”

Listen below, via CNN: