I can’t keep up with the stream of social-media neologisms. What does “derp” mean, and how do you even pronounce “pwn”? But one word I know is “troll.” A troll is someone who deliberately kindles acrimony by making outrageous, offensive or confusing remarks. Often it’s used as a verb, as in: Donald Trump has spent the past year and a half trolling the news media.

And he has. But few journalists have appreciated the degree to which Mr. Trump’s entire political and governing strategy depends on trolling them. They’ve mostly assumed his penchant for exaggeration and invention was the result of psychosis, or just ego. By now, though, it ought to be apparent that he’s doing it intentionally, and strategically.

On Saturday the president, in a visit to the CIA, claimed that up to 1.5 million people attended his inauguration (evidently this is not the case) and that journalists—especially, one assumes, those he thinks lowballed the attendance numbers—are “among the most dishonest human beings on earth.” Later that day, press secretary Sean Spicer appeared at a White House press briefing to claim, among other things, that last Friday’s inauguration was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration—period—both in person and around the globe.”

As many media outlets reported immediately, fewer people seem to have attended the event than watched Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration. TV ratings, though higher than Mr. Obama’s second inauguration, were lower than his first.

Many journalists responded to these remarks, predictably, with outrage. “Do citizens in dictatorships recognize what’s happening right here, right now?” CNN’s Brian Stelter asked on Sunday morning. “Are they looking at the first two days of the Trump administration and saying, ‘Oh, that’s what my leader does?’ . . . Will President Trump deny reality on a daily basis? Will he make up his own false facts and fake stats? What will the consequences be?”