“When you have 15,000 people marching up and you have hundreds and hundreds of people and you have two or three border security people that are brave and great,” the president said during a campaign rally in Florida. “And don’t forget, we don’t let them — and we can’t let them — use weapons. We can’t. Other countries do. We can’t. I would never do that. But how do you stop these people?”

At that moment, a rallygoer shouted, “Shoot them!” It is hard to hear the audience member’s outburst, but it has been confirmed by reporters who were there as well as Trump supporters who attended the rally.

The audience responded to the man’s “shoot them!” remark with cheers and applause.

“That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement,” Trump laughed with a shake of his head.

This is neither funny nor a good applause line. It is the sort of thing that normally gets a person cut off and tossed from a bar. But here is the president and his supporters laughing in response to a man’s call for border agents to shoot illegal immigrants.

Har, har, har.

Many of the president’s regular critics have responded by accusing him (inaccurately) of issuing an explicit call to arms.

“Desperate migrants are showing up at our southern border, many after weeks-long quests in search of refuge from gangs and cartels,” Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery said. “Our president is joking about shooting and killing them.”

New York Daily News columnist Brandon Friedman said elsewhere, “Trump says it’s ok to shoot immigrants ‘in the panhandle.'” (That’s not what he said about the Panhandle, of course.) Friedman then directed the question to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “you gonna impeach this fascist, or what?”

“The president literally joked about shooting immigrants,” said ThinkProgress’ Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani.

These people are right to be angry, even though their criticisms are just a little off. The president did not himself call for violence against illegal immigrants. And he did not say the Panhandle is a place to shoot them. Rather, he suggested the Panhandle is a place where outrageous statements are acceptable. But Trump certainly did nothing to dispute or even downplay an explicit endorsement of violence against illegal immigrants, and he should have. A real leader would have.

So, in case you were wondering, this one is not a media hoax. And it comes not long after law enforcement officials cracked down on a militia group, the United Constitutional Patriots, which had been tracking down illegal immigrants and detaining them against their will.

Trump deserves every bit of disparagement, grief, and condemnation he gets for this rally moment.

He is the president of the United States. He should try acting like it.