Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro Julian CastroSanders says Democrats should have given more speaking time to progressives Castro says DNC should have put more Latino speakers on stage from beginning Jill Biden defends husband's cognitive ability from Trump attacks: 'It's ridiculous' MORE blasted 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 attacks on House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings Elijah Eugene CummingsBlack GOP candidate accuses Behar of wearing black face in heated interview Overnight Health Care: US won't join global coronavirus vaccine initiative | Federal panel lays out initial priorities for COVID-19 vaccine distribution | NIH panel: 'Insufficient data' to show treatment touted by Trump works House Oversight Democrats to subpoena AbbVie in drug pricing probe MORE (D-Md.), saying they were part of a broader “racial priming” strategy to shore up the president's re-election support.

“It’s important for us to call it out for what it is, which is racism,” Castro said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” linking it to earlier remarks by Trump such as his attacks on a Mexican-American judge hearing a lawsuit against him and his insistence that some of the marchers in the 2017 “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., were “very fine people.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Trump “engages in what’s known as racial priming” and “tries to get people to move into their camps by racial and ethnic identities,” Castro said. “That’s how he thinks he won in 2016 and that’s how he thinks he’s going to win in 2020.”

.@JulianCastro calls @realDonaldTrump’s tweets about @RepCummings and Baltimore “racism.” He says the president is “the biggest identity politician we have seen in the last 50 years… that’s how he thinks he won in 2016, and that’s how he thinks he’s going to win in 2020.” pic.twitter.com/AlU72ohs4F — Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) July 28, 2019

The former HUD secretary and presidential candidate repeated remarks he made to NPR, calling Trump “the biggest identity politician we have seen in the last 50 years.”

The solution, Castro added, was to instead unite Americans across racial and ethnic lines based on shared values.

Castro also defended a clip CBS’ Margaret Brennan played in which, as mayor of San Antonio, he credited the Obama administration for sending more “boots on the ground” to the U.S./Mexico border.

Castro noted that in the clip he specifically discussed the apprehension and deportation of felons, contrasting this with “us[ing] migrants as a scapegoat to create fear and paranoia.”