CNN’s Fareed Zakaria told radio host Dean Obeidallah yesterday that the rise of Donald Trump has coincided with a rise in bigoted attacks against him

Mediaite reported that Zakaria said efforts to discredit or attack him based on his race, religion, and national origin used to be found in perhaps 2-5 percent of comments, but in the last year and a half, as Trump has risen to become the GOP's presidential candidate, that percentage has boosted to 15 percent. One example was a fake news report people believed claiming that Zakaria had called for the “jihad rape of white women.”

In another example, Trump supporter Ann Coulter recently attacked his “thick Indian accent.” Zakaria declared that Trump “has encouraged, legitimized, and facilitated a lot of his kind of conversation.”

Check out the short audio clip below: