Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” 2020 presidential hopeful, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro said President Donald Trump’s attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) is “racial priming.”

Castro said, “I absolutely think it’s important for us to call it out for what it is, which is racism. You know I’m not somebody- like a lot of Americans I’m not somebody that likes to use that term, or that is quick to call somebody a racist. I think you have to be very careful before you use that word. However, this president has shown us time and time again from the way that he started his campaign, to the comments about that Mexican-American judge during the campaign, to his failure to immediately condemn white supremacists in Charlottesville in 2018, to just a couple of weeks ago his comments about Representative Ocasio-Cortez and her three colleagues, to just these comments about Representative Cummings and his district as well as his comments about a year and a half ago- or maybe two years ago now about John Lewis in his district. There is a pattern here.”

He continued, “This guy is the biggest identity politician that we have seen in the last 50 years, and he engages in what’s known as racial priming. Basically using this language and taking actions to try and get people to move into their camps by racial and ethnic identity. That’s how he thinks he won in 2016 and that’s how he thinks he’s going to win in 2020. And, you know, I don’t think it’s going to be a coincidence that just a few weeks ago he kicked off his 2020 campaign and here we are with the same playbook that he used in 2016. But I believe that there are enough people, whether they’re white or black or Latino or Asian American, Native American, rich or poor who share the same values of basic respect and compassion and- and- you know, faith and love of country that are going to bring us together more strongly than he can tear us apart.”

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