Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful and former HUD Secretary Julián Castro called mass shootings a “consequence” of President Donald Trump “fanning the flames of hate.”

Castro said, “It’s so unfortunate that not only our president but his administration can’t rise up to the challenge of leadership in these times. Anybody who has the ability to see and hear and understand what the president has been doing since he started his campaign in 2015 knows that division and bigotry and fanning the flames of hate has been his political strategy. That’s how he believes that he won in 2016. And it’s no accident that just a few weeks after he announced his 2020 re-election bid there was he indulging and entertaining this “send her back” chant. He’s spoken about immigrants as being invaders. He’s given license for this toxic brew of white supremacy to fester more and more in this country. We’re seeing the results of that.”

He added, “I do agree with this, look, there’s one person that’s responsible directly for that shooting in El Paso and that’s the shooter. At the same time, as our national leader, you have a role to play in either fanning the flames in division or bringing Americans of different backgrounds together. Most presidents have chosen to try and bring people together. This president very early on made a clear choice to divide people for his own political benefit, and these are some of the consequences that we’re seeing of that.”

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