Donald Trump’s dog whistle rhetoric has fueled a “staggering” increase in hate crimes in the U.S. that one expert warns has reached the point of crisis.

Sharon Nazarian, political science professor and board member of the Anti-Defamation League, told Salon Friday that Trump’s rhetoric, such as when he described some of the white supremacists who marched at an infamous 2017 rally in Charlottesville as “very fine people,” to a stark increase in anti-Semitic attacks.

” Trump continues to tell anti-Semites that it is fine to operate out in the open and radicalize people through their use of disinformation and misinformation on the internet,” Nazarian told senior writer Chauncey DeVega. “We are in a moment of crisis.”

Nazarian reveals the ADL’s recent audit of anti-Semitic incidents found a […]