In a thinly veiled reference to President Donald J. Trump, former President Bill Clinton unleashed a warning against the rising “nationalism” he sees across the globe.

“People who claim to want the nation-state are actually trying to have a pan-national movement to institutionalize separatism and division within borders all over the world,” Clinton said during a speech at the liberal Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., Politico reported.

“It’s like we’re all having an identity crisis at once — and it is an inevitable consequence of the economic and social changes that have occurred at an increasingly rapid pace,” Clinton added.

With his first major public appearance since his wife lost her second bid for the White House, Clinton lamented the “us vs. them” attitude he sees in the world.

Clinton asked his audience to consider the two choices the “us vs. them” sentiment fosters, asking, “Are we going to live in an us and them world, or a world that we live in together? If you got that, in every age and time, the challenges we face can be resolved in a way to keep us going forward instead of taking us to the edge of destruction.”

The ex-president’s comments are clearly aimed at Donald Trump, though Clinton didn’t utter Trump’s name during the event. Critics of President Trump have accused him of pushing a policy of “nationalism.”

These statements may not be surprising from a figure who has called for wide open borders.

On that terrible day in 2001 that radical Muslim terrorists launched the most devastating attack on the U.S.A. in history, Bill Clinton was in Australia giving a speech before a group of businessmen. In comments made only ten hours before the towers fell in New York, Bill Clinton said he felt the wold would be a better place if there were no national borders.

According to someone with knowledge of the former president’s speech, Clinton said he believes “the world will be a better place if all borders are eliminated – from a trade perspective, from the viewpoint of economic development and in welcoming [the free movement of] people from other cultures and countries.”

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.