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When asked what he would say to Trump if he had an opportunity to speak to him like he did Cuccinelli, O’Malley told Salon that he would criticize “the scapegoating and the racism that’s being hurled at immigrant people” and the construction of large internment camps “for penning up people that are primarily brown-skinned and Spanish-speaking.” O’Malley described these things as “an outrage that runs contrary to everything our country stands for.”

The former 2016 presidential contender also denounced “the ripping of toddlers and children from their parents’ arms, putting them in cages, the sort of intentional infliction of emotional damage to kids. How do you put an estimate on that damage to real people and the memory of that trauma for years to come?” He identified certain elements of Trump’s political movement as fascistic, including “the scapegoating of ethnic groups, the promotion of a white militant ethnic nationalism, [the] aggressive masculinity and also encouraging supporters to resort to violence against political opponents. All of these things are the hallmarks of fascism.”

During the 2016 presidential election, O’Malley was the last candidate to drop out of the Democratic race before it became a two-way contest between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. He spoke with Salon last year about his criticisms of aspects of the primary process, and in particular the presidential debates.