Former Gen. Barry McCaffrey on Monday said President Donald Trump Donald John TrumpBarr criticizes DOJ in speech declaring all agency power 'is invested in the attorney general' Military leaders asked about using heat ray on protesters outside White House: report Powell warns failure to reach COVID-19 deal could 'scar and damage' economy MORE’s recent comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin may be “the most anti-American statement” ever made by a commander-in-chief.

“I’m actually incredulous that the president would make a statement like that,” McCaffrey told MSNBC.

“One could argue that’s the most anti-American statement ever made by the president of the United States. To confuse American values with Putin, who is running a criminal oligarchy.”

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Trump in an interview pushed back when Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said Putin is “a killer.”

“There are a lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent?" Trump said.

McCaffrey told MSNBC that the president's comments shed light on “an astonishing state of affairs,” adding that “it’s hard to know what to think about it.”

Putin "kills people abroad and at home," he said, also touching on the imprisonment of journalists, seizures of business property and invasions of Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Vice President Mike Pence Michael (Mike) Richard PenceGOP short of votes on Trump's controversial Fed pick Pence seeks to boost Daines in critical Montana Senate race The Hill's Campaign Report: Trump's rally risk | Biden ramps up legal team | Biden hits Trump over climate policy MORE on Sunday argued Trump was not trying to compare the two countries.

“I simply don’t accept that there was any moral equivalency in the president’s comments,” he told CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”