WASHINGTON — Last Thursday, Van Jones couldn’t even buy a tuna wrap here without a woman in her late 20s walking up to him to ask for a selfie. Two minutes later, the Argentine woman behind the counter gave him a thumbs up.

“It’s like this everywhere,” said Mr. Jones, 48. “I haven’t paid for a cab since the election.”

That is when this CNN commentator, whose fiery political exchanges with supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump over the last nine months have often gone viral, declared that the Republican nominee’s victory represented a “whitelash” against a black president and a changing electorate, as well as a deeply painful moment for minorities in America.

“You tell your kids, ‘Don’t be a bigot,’” he said on camera. “You tell your kids, ‘Do your homework and be prepared.’ And then you have this outcome, and you have people putting children to bed tonight. And they’re afraid of breakfast. They’re afraid of, how do I explain this to my children?”

Perhaps predictably, these comments garnered swift outrage from some on the right, such as Rush Limbaugh, who said the election had “nothing to do with white people wanting their country back on racial concerns.” But in the liberal enclaves Mr. Jones inhabits, they were treated as something like gospel: a moment of naked honesty in a campaign season filled with distortions.