In a Monday segment, CNN spoke to Cortes and political analyst Joshua Green about whether President Donald Trump's rhetoric had contributed to recent mail bombs targeting liberal public figures and the mass shooting at a Jewish synagogue over the weekend.
"This isn't the first time that anti-Semitic themes have cropped up in regard to Donald Trump," Greene noted. "During the campaign, Trump was well known for not only retweeting anti-Semitic imagery, but in some of his ads featuring prominent Jewish bankers and propagating well-known anti-Semitic themes."
"To anyone who follows Trump on social media, he hasn't backed down one inch from those criticism," he continued. "And [Trump] continues to use these tropes and this language, talking about invaders, pushing the idea of nefariously funded migrant caravan moving up to invade our borders. And all of that kind of language stoked and energized some of the people we've seen, sending pipe bombs, conducting a massacre in Pittsburgh."
Cortes argued that the "monster" who is responsible for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting "hated Donald Trump."
"He thought Donald Trump wasn't going far enough in his hatred of Jews," Greene pointed out.
"Let me talk!" Cortes shouted. "Because he thought Donald Trump, himself, was controlled by Jews."
Jim Sciutto observed that both Trump and the shooter had pushed the conspiracy theory that the migrant caravan is "full of invaders and that Jews were behind it."
"Does that add to the anger that leads someone like this to take action?" the CNN host asked.
"No, the president didn't add to it," Cortes insisted. "He certainly never said that Jews were behind the caravan."
"But nevertheless, the caravan is a threat to American sovereignty," he added. "When you have a group -- a large caravan of border trespassers who are waving foreign flags and promising to break and enter into the United States and demand that we as a country accommodate them. And I don't care whether they're from Honduras or Norway or Japan."
"Steve, I've got to interrupt you," Sciutto chimed in. "We have some breaking news just in to CNN -- in the environment here -- another suspicious package addressed to CNN has been intercepted, this time at a post office in Atlanta."
CNN justice correspondent Evan Perez also reported that the package was "similar to ones being sent to prominent Democrats and to people at CNN in the past week" allegedly by a Florida Trump supporter.
Other suspected mail bombs were sent to former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), former Attorney General Eric Holder, actor Robert De Niro, billionaire George Soros and activist Tom Steyer. Two packages found last week were also addressed to CNN.
In all, 15 suspected mail bombs have been recovered by law enforcement.
Watch the video below from CNN.
