New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz spoke out on Thursday, saying racist graffiti found at the home of teammate Nikita Whitlock shows the “state of the country,” as well as the “mindset that comes with supporting a guy like Donald Trump.”

On Tuesday night, burglars broke into Whitlock’s home, spray painting a swastika, “KKK,” and the word “Trump,” which prompted police to treat the incident as a hate crime.

On Thursday, Cruz shared his thoughts on the incident with reporters. Cruz said, “I think it’s definitely a direct reflection of how this country is being run and how this country is reacting maybe to some of the decisions and some of the ways that this country is being run and the things that are being said by the people at [the] helm of this country and at the helm of our day-to-day lives.

“From social media all the way up to the White House, these are things that are being spoken of and talked about on a daily basis, the good and the bad — more so the bad at this point right now because that’s all we have to work with. It’s just an unfortunate situation that we’re going through right now.”

Cruz minced no words when explaining where he believes the motivation for this incident came from. Cruz explained, “I think there’s a specific mindset that comes with supporting a guy like Donald Trump and supporting what he stands for, and there’s a certain type of person that comes with that. I’m not sure that person is always a positive-minded person, if you know what I mean. You’ve just got to be careful.

“As [a] minority, you have to be careful, as a person of influence you have to be careful and you’ve just got to make sure your family is safe and give them the knowledge that they need to stay safe in this world.”

To Cruz, those who support Trump possess precious little in the way of redeemable qualities. Cruz maintains, “You can’t think of anything that that person that follows Donald Trump — that they’re going to do something positive. And for someone to vandalize someone’s house and write Trump’s name or whatever they wrote on the walls, it’s just proving that exact fact that I’m saying — that people that may follow him aren’t necessarily the most positive people in our community.”

Cruz will of course receive quite the shock when someone informs him that the person “at the helm” of the country is not named Donald Trump.

Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn