After spending much of the week touring the Middle East in the company of Gulf leaders not known for tolerating dissent, President Trump was reminded on Friday that in his own country, people are free to say whatever they would like about their president.
He did not seem terribly comforted by this reality.
While flying back to Washington on Air Force One, he had evidently become aware that Bruce Springsteen had slammed him on Wednesday while performing in England. Shortly after the plane took off from Abu Dhabi’s international airport, Mr. Trump posted on social media: “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’ Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”
There were other posts aimed at other critics.
“Has anyone noticed,” Mr. Trump wrote in one of them, “that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?’” Shortly after that one, he took a swipe at “grandstanders” in the Republican Party and “radical left losers” getting in the way of his agenda and the Supreme Court, which he said was “being played.”
It is not unusual for this president to be fighting on the internet with celebrities or political opponents or even the Supreme Court, but his posting spree read like a comedown of sorts after four days spent basking in the kind of opulent splendor and lavish praise he found in the Middle East, which so delight him.
And his vague threat on Friday about what may await Mr. Springsteen upon his return to the United States seemed ominous, since these days so many of his threats have turned out not to be empty ones.
Asked what exactly Mr. Trump was implying, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, would only send back a string of insults about Mr. Springsteen’s career.
“The America I love,” he said during his show in Manchester, “is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”
Mr. Springsteen went hard at the White House.
“They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that has led to a more just and plural society,” he said. “They’re abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.”
The remarks by Mr. Springsteen, who campaigned for Kamala Harris, got a lot of attention at a time when many public figures in American life have avoided criticizing a president who campaigned on enacting retribution and has in many ways delivered on that promise.
A representative for Mr. Springsteen did not return requests for comment.
Shawn McCreesh is a White House reporter for The Times covering the Trump administration.
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