Of course it was a gag, as well as what he sees as a Presidential “Bite me!” Of course it is also a joke too far, arguably even worse than Reagan’s gaffe when he assumed a sound test before his radio address wouldn’t leak out. Remember?

But as much as the liberal media hated Reagan, they didn’t have so much bias against him that they assumed his joke was serious. Trump’s critics do. Bias (and hate) has made them that stupid.

And Trump’s defiant trolling is irresponsible exactly because bias has made his enemies so stupid. It is also unpresidential, unprofessional and unethical to make fake announcements just to annoy smart people, fool gullible people, and infuriate deranged people. But this is Julie Principle territory, albeit on the extreme edges. This is Trump; it’s one of the ways he deals with adversity (he is very good at dealing with adversity), and one would think that by now his foes would have figured that out. One would be wrong.

Naturally, my Trump Deranged Facebook friends all are saying, “See? He really is demented! Now let’s use the 25th Amendment option to get rid of him!” (That’s Plan E on the list of Axis Trump removal plots) Morons.

To be fair, Trump’s previous serious press secretary appointment was so terrible that it made this fake one seem somewhat plausible. I won’t go so far as to theorize that the Katie Zacharia debacle was part of an elaborate set-up for the current POTUS joke, but Trump’s history of terrible appointments certainly helped to make those who have nothing but contempt for him misinterpret his latest and most elaborate public gag.

Well I get it, Mr. President. “You ain’t down yet,” you aren’t in despair and are ready to fight. Good. Now get serious and stop fooling around. This doesn’t help.