Yes, but this is not taking him seriously, it is panicking over every idle provocation he utters. Taking him seriously would be the right way to approach it, and we are not.

He is literally flooding the zone, and it is working because we fall for the bait every time. This is how he manages to skate on the more odious actions, because until someone actually gets killed the public is desensitized to all the shrill "he's ending democracy" claims that sound faintly similar to, and about as credible as his claims that the 2020 election was stolen.