Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns took aim at Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in an appearance on CNN on Tuesday morning, comparing the leader's policies to those of the Soviet Union and "the Nazis."

"All of these bills that DeSantis and others are doing limit our ability to understand who we are and are not inclusive. They are exclusive," he said.

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On Monday, Burns sounded off on Florida House Bill 999 on Twitter, which would prohibit state universities from using diversity, equity, and inclusion or critical race theory rhetoric and principles in hiring or programs. Further, state universities would be charged with removing "any major or minor in Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, or Intersectionality, or any derivative major or minor of these belief systems."

The filmmaker's thread espoused his disapproval of the measure, slamming it as "an assault on the very liberties articulated by the Founders."

"They are narrowing the focus of what is and isn’t American history. It’s terrifying. It feels like a Soviet system or, you know, the way the Nazis would build a Potemkin village," he told the hosts.

"It’s just a kind of rewriting of history at the most dangerous level. It’s a huge threat to our republic," he added.

Burns additionally claimed that "I can tell you that Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine and George Washington and John Adams and James Madison and Alexander Hamilton are rolling over in their graves if they think that this person is carrying the mantle of what it is to be American," revealing that he is currently "working on a major series on the history of the American revolution."

According to him, the Florida governor is attempting to depict American history as a "neat, tidy white picket fence morning in America."

However, Burns said, "this is a complicated world, and race is in everything we touch."

"We were founded on the idea that all men were created equal. The guy who wrote that owned hundreds of human beings and didn’t see the contradiction or the hypocrisy," he alleged. Contrary to Burns's claim, Thomas Jefferson was an outward opponent of slavery, believing it to be one of the greatest threats to the survival of America.

In Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, he reflected on the "influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us."

"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?" the founding father wondered. "That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever."

Author and commentator Ta-Nehisi Coates penned an op-ed in 2012 in which he acknowledged that Jefferson was perhaps more aware and honest with himself about the reality of slavery than even his contemporaries. "When people say Jefferson was merely a 'man of his times' they sell him short," he wrote.

None of the morning show's hosts pressed Burns on his assertion, however.

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"Our whole story is based in a discussion in race along with the meaning of freedom, and that’s complicated too," Burns continued.

He further warned of the threat of "white supremacy," noting that "there is a kind of fear of the other."