WATCH: Here is why Trump is like opioids for racist white people

An anti-racist educator activist compared Donald Trump to narcotics for the way his racist base appears to be addicted to his bigoted rhetoric.

MSNBC host Joy Reid mused that many people on both sides of the political spectrum have a tolerance for the president's violent and racist rhetoric, most recently illustrated by his doctored video attacking Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). She then wondered why he's allowed to get away with it.

Tim Wise explained to his MSNBC co-panelists Saturday morning that although people don't necessarily want full-on "authoritarianism," Trump's dictatorial brand that "focuses on brown skin folk," Muslims and non-white immigrants is effective because it's building off traditions of American fearmongering.

Those attacks are effective, Wise added, because "it's the oldest play in the American political playbook — to have rich white men telling not-rich white people that their enemies are black or their enemies are brown."

"When we talk about the opioid crisis, we think of heroin, we think of fentanyl, we think of Oxycontin or whatever," the educator said, "but the reality is Donald Trump is a walking, talking, breathing opioid."

"He says to white people: 'they are the source of your pain. I can numb your pain by telling you who's to blame for it and who's the cause of it,'" Wise added. "But just like regular opiates, Donald Trump can't actually solve the problem."

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