I don’t think your definition of middle class is what most people use when they talk about it.
This is really obvious if you think about people remarking on the death of the middle class. They’re not saying that the mean or the median doesn’t exist. They are saying that families like the Simpsons are much less common than they used to be.
I like how they already frame it as him taking the bait. Because they’re desperate to have an excuse, and they want to blame the moderator or his opponent for tricking him into being an a******.
They know that he will, they know that he’ll say ridiculous things, and they’re trying to come up with as many preemptions strategies as they can.