He went on to say: “I expect adversarial questions. And you rarely disappoint me. And I think it’s part of what make America function.”

It was a start, I guess. But it fell short of the full-throated “knock it off” to Mr. Trump that these times demand, at least when it comes to calling true journalism false or calling journalists dishonest enemies.

The office of Representative Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker, declined to engage with me on Saturday when I asked for a comment on whether Mr. Ryan was comfortable with what I called Mr. Trump’s attempt to delegitimize the fourth estate. His office said it disputed the premise of the question.

As a couple of senior congressional Republican aides told me on Saturday — on condition of anonymity, to speak candidly about private discussions — there is a view on their side of the aisle that, while Mr. Trump’s bombast is notable, the press is being too quick to hyperventilate, and that, in the end, things will be just fine.

And every week I wonder about it myself — how serious are all the threats and bluster against the news media by Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon, given that news organizations continue to break big stories about the administration with help from leaks that have not abated despite the presidential pounding?

None of it stopped The Washington Post from reporting on Friday that presidential aides, after failing to convince the F.B.I. to publicly dispute reports by The New York Times and CNN about contact between Trump campaign aides and Russian intelligence, went on to successfully pressure other intelligence officials and key congressmen to do the same. It didn’t keep The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal from reporting on a Department of Homeland Security assessment disputing the basis for the administration’s attempt to block travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Nor did it stop the news team at KOKH, a Fox television station in Oklahoma City, from learning and reporting that Mr. Trump’s new leader of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, conducted some state business by private email during his time as Oklahoma’s attorney general, despite denying that he did so in recent Senate testimony.