MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s political rhetoric is “racist,” and evocative of Adolf Hitler, former Mexican President Felipe Calderón told reporters at an event in Mexico City on Saturday.

“This logic of praising the white supremacy is not just anti-immigration,” Calderón said. “He is acting and speaking out against immigrants that have a different skin color than he does, it is frankly racist and [he is] exploiting feelings like Hitler did in his time,” Calderón said.

Trump has accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug runners across the U.S. border and has said he will make Mexicans pay for a wall on the border.

Felipe Calderón was president of Mexico from 2006-12.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Calderón’s predecessor, also compared Trump to Hitler in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN.

“He reminds me of Hitler,” Fox told Cooper on Friday.

(Reporting by Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein and Luis Rojas, editing by G Crosse)

Photo: Felipe Calderon, former Mexican president, delivers a speech during the High Level Segment of the U.N. Climate Change Conference COP 20 in Lima in this December 11, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Enrique Castro-Mendivil