CHICAGO—Bernie Sanders unleashed what was perhaps his strongest condemnation against Donald Trump in a Saturday morning press conference in Chicago's Hyatt Regency. When asked about the planned rally in the city last night, which was shut down by protesters, Sanders explained that the incident was indicative of Trump's cultivating of hatred.

"What the Trump campaign has been about is insulting Mexicans in a very crude way," Sanders said. "It's been about insulting African-Americans - let us not for one moment forget, and I think sometimes people do, that Donald Trump was at the forefront of the so-called Birther Movement. And that vicious movement was designed to deligitimaze President Barack Obama as president of the United States because of the color of his skin."

Sanders added that he found it interesting that no one had asked about his birth certificate even though his father is from Poland. "I think it has something to do with the color of my skin." Trump spent part of the day blaming Sanders' supporters for shutting down his rally, as some of those at the UIC Pavillion on Friday night shouted "Bernie," when the cancellation was announced.

“As is the case virtually every day, Donald Trump is showing the American people that he is a pathological liar," a statement from Sanders read in response. "Obviously, while I appreciate that we had supporters at Trump’s rally in Chicago, our campaign did not organize the protests.

The Clinton campaign's statement on the rally, meanwhile, drew the ire of Twitter users for its odd comparison to last year's shooting that left 9 dead at a black South Carolina church. When The Daily Beast asked Sanders about Clinton's statement he didn't appear to be familiar with it and jumped back into some of his stump rhetoric.

"I think what we have got to do as a nation is in fact to come together to address the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality," Sanders told The Daily Beast. "We have a mayor here who is talking about shutting down dozens of schools and firing teachers. Meanwhile, what we have seen in America is a huge increase in wealth for the top one percent and the largest corporations."

—Gideon Resnick