On the other hand he called for a foreign country to hack into his opponents' email and release all of it. So, he obviously doesn't value privacy that much
In my opinion people in high visibility, high power jobs are not allowed to make tasteless jokes towards the people they have power over. It avoids such misunderstandings.
Especially on the topic of privacy, meticulously courteous didn't work, people just lied to your face. So this is at least another tactic. Doesn't seem like much though.
It wasn’t a joke because then it happened and he moved to capitalize on it. You should know that at this point so why are you pushing an inaccurate revision to history?