Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said plainly Sunday that “we have a President who is a racist.”

In an interview with Brown, NBC “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd pressed the senator, a potential candidate for president in 2020, on that description: “Let me pause you there. You believe in his heart he’s a racist?” Todd asked.

“Well, I don’t know what ‘in his heart’ means,” the senator responded. “I know that he built his political career knowing what he was doing on questioning the legitimacy and the birthplace of the President of the United States.”

Noting the “decades and decades and decades of housing discrimination” in the United States, Brown cited “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander and “The Color of Law” by Richard Rothstein and added: “We know that the Trump family including the now-sitting President played to that and deepened that” through the real estate business.

The Nixon Justice Department sued Trump, his father, and Trump Management in 1973 for allegedly discriminating against prospective African American tenants.

“Charlottesville was only a symptom and a more public viewing and outing, if you will, of the President’s views about race,” Brown said. “I mean, there’s just no question about that.”