This is Not From a Parody Account

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Today, Trump will be entertaining some of his fringe social media allies to give them legitimacy because legitimate news doesn't cater to his pathology the way he thinks they should.  The way Trump posted this could be assumed to be with a winking acknowledgement of his media persona as a name-calling, vain, chronic narcissist. As in, he "gets" the joke.

But it isn't a joke--the is who the president of the United States is. He's a shameful, insulting person who is on his way to meltdown when his inadequacies are correctly portrayed. When he says "just kidding"--he's not. It is a cold trick to point out that journalism as a business is in trouble; a colder trick to portray it as being the fault of the people who are trying to do a good job reflecting the facts as they are without fear or favor, while he rewards sycophants and liars. It is another to say "we will not let them get away with it much longer" as a person who swore to uphold the Constitution, which enshrines freedom of the press. He is issuing a threat.

This would be "normal" if it came from a parody account--a series of Tweets that display the worst of the man. But this is how he represents himself--a conscious choice. A deplorable one.