This fits the pattern, make a joke about a real concern, laugh about it with his supporters and the media. A complete inoculation against this criticism, it won’t be brought up again in any serious context.
An actual, diagnostic characteristic of Malignant Narcissistic sociopaths is joking at inappropriate times about inappropriate subjects. To Barry, the golf course is serious, and the economy is funny. As long as he gets his tax-payer funded super-jet, hundred-dollar-a-pound taxpayer funded Wagu and million-dollar taxpayer funded parties, the economy is a lark. Just don’t tell him he has to skip his weekly eighteen holes—he’ll go ballistic.
This is how the immature are made to comply...mostly college age persons and the willingly sheepish group thinkers. It is a form of psychological control/manipulation and abuse that the left so proficient uses when they want to deflect. It is a sort of psychological warning..."don't go there or you are out".