“This country hasn’t dealt well with issues of race. We have a president who’s a racist,” Brown, who is considering running for president in 2020, said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Host Chuck Todd then pressed Brown over whether he believes that Trump “in his heart” is a racist.

Brown pointed to Trump’s past claims that former President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and allegations that he discriminated against black people as a real estate owner.

“I don’t know what ‘in his heart’ means. I know he built his political career knowing what he was doing in questioning the legitimacy and the birthplace of the presidency of the United States,” Brown said.