New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman stood by his post-presidential election comments calling the outcome a “moral 9/11” and claimed President-Elect Donald Trump appealed to “middle America” because “this world’s going to be too fast for a lot of people” during an interview Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week.”

Friedman garnered massive backlash Friday when he wrote in a column that Trump’s general election victory amounted to a “moral 9/11” except that “9/11 was done from us on the outside and we did this to ourselves.” When “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos asked him for an explanation for his “pretty apocalyptic language,” Friedman attempted to shift blame to the Trump campaign’s rhetoric.

Friedman, along with peddlers of racial division like CNN’s Van Jones, have completely disregarded the fact most Americans haven’t experienced a real increase to their median household income since 1999.

“Red lines were erased that I don’t think will be easily restored. So, this was a huge moral event, and there’s no question about it,” Friedman told Stephanopoulos.

Friedman then proceeded to offer an analysis of what drove Trump’s success with “middle America” that could best be described as doubling down on an out-of-touch, elite misunderstanding of the election.

“The accelerations in immigration that’s going on – there are a lot of people out there in middle America, they go to the grocery store and now the cashier’s speaking Spanish. That’s really fine by me – I love a pluralistic society – but I can understand why that makes them feel less at home,” Friedman pontificated.

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“They go into the men’s room and there’s someone that looks like a woman who may be a man. That’s totally fine by me – I’m really glad LGBT people have their rights, but I can understand how that change came too fast,” Friedman condescended.

“Then they go to the office and now there’s a robot that is next to them that seems to be studying their job,” Friedman added. “So the two things that most define people – their sense of home and community and their sense of work – these accelerations are deeply disrupting.”

The theorizing from Friedman is the latest in a string of explanations for Trump’s success offered by Democrats and media elites that tries to keep the conversation mired in liberal identity politics.

Friedman, along with peddlers of racial division like CNN’s Van Jones, have completely disregarded the fact most Americans haven’t experienced a real increase to their median household income since 1999 while they’ve watched Wall Street banks, large-multi-national corporations and political insiders thrive off the profits of globalization and outsourcing.

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Ironically enough the most succinct, accurate accounting for Trump’s electoral success on the Sunday talk shows, from a figure outside the GOP, came from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Trump has “very, very good political instincts,” Sanders said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, “What he understood, which many Democrats did not, which is if you are an average American out there making $30, 40, 50 thousand dollars a year … you know what, John, you’re pissed off, you’re not happy about it, you’re seeing your jobs to go to China.”

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Sanders also hammered the elite mentality that has permeated the Democratic Party leadership.

“I think what the conclusion is Democrats have focused too much with a liberal elite which is raising incredible sums of money from wealthy people in the upper middle class but has ignored to a very significant degree the working class and the middle class and low-income people in this country.”

Friedman didn’t seem to register any of that Sunday and even went so far off the reservation as to suggest Trump should pursue “climate change” as a first priority in office — making the outlandish assumption the climate issue was the real driver of America’s immigration woes.

“You know, I think the most important thing [Trump] can do is obviously be a healer, but start with the climate issue. It’s so much more important than he realizes, George,” Friedman said. “Because a lot of this immigration push … it’s people being driven off the land, they’re going north, they’re coming our way. Don’t dismiss it. It’s a hugely important issue.”