In an interview that aired Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes," the 29-year-old New York Democrat said Trump is "a symptom of a problem."
"The president certainly didn't invent racism, but he's certainly given a voice to it and expanded it and created a platform for those things," she told correspondent Anderson Cooper.
Cooper then asked: "Do you believe President Trump is a racist?"
"Yeah, yeah, no question," she said, adding that Trump uses words that are "historic dog whistles of white supremacy."
Ocasio-Cortez pointed to Trump's reaction to a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a counter-protester was killed.
"When you look at how he reacted to the Charlottesville incident, where neo-Nazis murdered a woman, versus how he manufactures crises like immigrants seeking legal refuge on our borders, it's night and day," she said.
The White House slammed Ocasio-Cortez's words in a statement, saying Trump "has repeatedly condemned racism and bigotry in all forms."
"Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez's sheer ignorance on the matter can't cover the fact that President Trump supported and passed historic criminal justice reform," the statement said, according to CBS News.
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