The murder of eight people Tuesday at three spas in the Atlanta area constitute a hate crime, and former President Donald Trump’s “hateful rhetoric” is partly to blame for the violence, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Wednesday.

A white gunman accused of killing eight people, most of them of women of Asian descent, at three Atlanta-area massage parlors was charged with murder Wednesday in an attack that sent terror through the Asian American community that’s increasingly been targeted during the coronavirus pandemic.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday condemned a mass shooting a day earlier in Georgia that left eight people dead, most of them women of Asian descent.