“When I read that quote, Joe, about ‘who cares about those kids, they voted for the other guy.’ The first thing that came to my mind was that’s exactly how Sunnis would talk about Shiites or Shiites would talk about Sunnis in Baghdad or Beirut,” Friedman told host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday.

Friedman drew a comparison to conditions that plunged Lebanon into civil war, saying the messages are “sick.”

“The Lebanese civil war started in 1975 when a school bus got shot up,” Friedman said. “And I think that’s a sign of how — sometimes you need to read a quote like that to realize how far we’ve descended, how deep the polarization has become. These aren’t fellow citizens, these aren’t fellow New Jerseyans: They are the enemy. That’s really sick.”