CNN’s Van Jones compared Glenn Youngkin to the Delta variant of the coronavirus hours before the Republican won Virginia’s tight race for governor.

The former Obama administration official likened Youngkin to the highly transmissible variant of the virus, which emerged over the summer, before the polls closed on Tuesday night.

“The stakes are high. When this election is over in Virginia, we will know… have we seen the emergence of the Delta variant of Trumpism? The Delta variant of Trumpism,” Jones said. “In other words, Youngkin, same disease, but spreads a lot faster and can get a lot more places.”

He later took to Twitter to clarify his point. “My point is that playing on racial fears by demagoguing [critical race theory] furthers dangerous aspects of Trumpism, just in friendlier form,” he wrote. “Did not mean to imply that human beings are diseases.”