You are a fool if you think this isn't a threat.
I guess I'd put it this way. I think we can agree that it is sensationalistic to report something that won't happen.
I'm not a Trump booster - but I do think these two HN comments are giving him too much power.
Presidents have no power to remove judges. (And everybody knows it - especially judges.) Wishing that his friends in Congress would help him out by launching impeachment hearings won't make it happen -- mainly because it would need something like 7 Democratic votes in the Senate to actually succeed. (So "threatening" a judge... does nothing. You might as well stand in a field and say "Ooh, I wish you weren't a judge any more!")
It's also convoluted to say there's some credible threat in the fact that Trump nominates judges. (What are you saying -- that during the vetting process for future judges he'll ask each candidate, "What's your stance on sending future parking lot protesters to foreign prisons for 20-year sentences?")
It's mildly newsworthy that he's talking out loud about such an outrageous hypothetical. But it's clearly just posing as powerful and in control for his base. A president does not have this power - and I honestly don't think he even cares. He just wants to act like he does for a few moments on Truth Social.
The only really newsworthy thing here is the protests upset him enough that he had to specifically address it with some made-up hypothetical to make himself and his base feel like he's not losing popular support.
Though, actually, even if you are correct and there is a magic line in the sand of unconstitutionality that he somehow will not or cannot cross, that’s _still_ news, in that it must then be read as “president is issuing illegal threats” or “president is stark raving mad”. There is no way to read this as “not news” or as “not concerning”.