Former Vice President Joe Biden Joe BidenPelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Hillicon Valley: Subpoenas for Facebook, Google and Twitter on the cards | Wray rebuffs mail-in voting conspiracies | Reps. raise mass surveillance concerns Fox News poll: Biden ahead of Trump in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Ohio MORE pushed back Monday evening on President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE’s characterization of mental illness as the cause of an El Paso, Texas, mass shooting over the weekend.

"Hatred is sick, but it's not a mental illness," Biden said in a Monday interview on CNN. "White supremacy is wrong, but it's not mental illness."

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The suspect in the shooting, which killed at least 22 people on Saturday, has been tied to a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto that was posted online just before the attack began and speaks of a "Hispanic invasion of Texas."

Although President Trump condemned white supremacy in remarks Monday morning, they came after he tweeted that Congress should tie any gun control measures to immigration reform. Biden criticized Trump for equating the two issues, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “They're not immigrants doing these things. They're American citizens doing these things.”

Biden warned that “the white supremacists are winning the battle” for the soul of the nation as things currently stand.

“This is domestic terrorism,” he added.

White supremacists are winning the battle for the soul of the nation, Joe Biden tells @andersoncooper.



"...This is white nationalism, this is terrorism of a different sort," he added, calling the mass shootings over the weekend a "defining moment." https://t.co/XTbTzenoqi pic.twitter.com/duZJjv8g31 — Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) August 6, 2019

The former vice president, whose campaign announcement blasted Trump’s response to the deadly “Unite the Right” white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., said the El Paso shooting represented another “defining moment.”

“It’s a continuation,” Biden said. “I mean, this is the president who continues to speak in ways that just are completely contrary to everything who we are. I mean, referring to ... Mexicans as rapists and talking about the rats in Baltimore. I mean, the way he talks about people.”

Biden stopped short of declaring Trump himself a white supremacist, unlike candidates including former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), whose hometown was the site of the shooting.

"Clearly his actions have done nothing to do anything other than encourage this kind of behavior," Biden said. "I'm not sure what this guy believes."

However, Biden expressed some agreement with Trump in tying the shooting and others like it to violent video games.

"It is not healthy having these games teaching kids this dispassionate notion you can ... blow their brains out," but added that "it's not in and of itself why we have this climate."