President posts a Christmas-week message on his social network telling 'sleazebags and losers' to enjoy 'what may be your last merry Christmas.'

The President, on Saturday morning, posted on his social network a holiday message addressed to sleazebags and losers. The post, which I am abridging because the full version is several screens long, told the sleazebags and the losers that they should enjoy what may be your last merry Christmas.

The named sleazebags, in the post and its sequels through the morning, included one cable-news anchor, one congressional opponent, two former federal prosecutors, the president of a public university, three former cabinet officials from the prior administration, the publisher of a national newspaper, and a federal judge.

Hon. I want to read the part of the post that is the part. The phrase is what may be your last merry Christmas. That phrase, in plain English, is a threat. Not metaphorically. Literally. It is a threat against people the President has named. It is the kind of phrase that, if a regular customer at the diner I work at said it about another regular customer, I would call the manager. I would call the cops if it kept up. The cops would take it seriously. That is the rule for regular customers in West Texas. The same rule does not, on the public record, apply when the speaker is the President of the United States.

The post was on the public feed for eleven minutes before the press shop, in any way, addressed it. The press shop did not, by Saturday afternoon, ask the President to take it down. The post is still on the feed.

I have been a waitress for thirty years. The thing about threats from regulars is that some of them are jokes and some of them are not and the way you tell the difference is the second time. The first time, you let it go. The second time, you don’t. The President has, on the public record, posted a version of this kind of thing more than once a week, every week, since the inauguration. That is not the first time. That is not the second time. That is the fifty-second time.

The named sleazebags, by the way, are people with names and addresses. Two of them, by Saturday afternoon, had, on the public record, requested federal protective service review of their personal security. The protective service is the federal government. The federal government is now allocating personal security review, on the named individuals’ requests, on the basis of social-media posts by the head of the federal government.

That is one branch of government, in one feed, generating another branch’s workload. On a Saturday morning. In Christmas week.

That ought to concern you.