Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, faulted Vice President Joe Biden for making the “most racially divisive comment of the entire election” while campaigning in Virginia last summer.

“I think the most racially divisive comment of the entire election was Joe Biden’s comment where he said if the Republicans win, they’re, quote, ‘Going to put you all back in chains,’” Cruz said this morning on Meet The Press. “That made my heart weep to see a sitting vice president playing to racial fears and playing on those issues. I think that’s unfortunate. I don’t think it has any place in politics.”

Biden made that comment while talking about Mitt Romney and Wall Street regulations on the campaign trail in Danville, Va.

“[Romney] said in the first 100 days he’s going to let the big banks write their own rules,” Biden told the crowd. “Unchain Wall Street! They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”

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Cruz mentioned Biden’s remark because NBC’s David Gregory, noting that he was one of the “new faces in the Republican Party, minority faces and voices in the party,” asked him to respond to Colin Powell’s fear of “a dark vein of intolerance” in the GOP.

“I respect General Powell a great deal,” Cruz replied. “I– I was disappointed with those comments. I– I think he was buying into some of the partisan attacks.”