"See now, the press will take that, and they'll say, 'He said a horrible thing.'"
Ok, so the guy is a fuckwit and all, but the article has right in it where he pretty plainly put it as a joke. We don't need to feed the new cycle with every crass bs thing that comes out of his mouth.
His audience laughed because they're dumb. But to me, this looks like the negging thing where you anticipate being called out for your insult and say "It's a joke. It's just a joke!"
Seems like just a straight up ploy for free publicity. He needs (craves) media attention, and saying outrageous things is his favorite way of getting to the top of the 24 hour news cycle.
I mean, regardless, the reason he says shit like that is so he can later point to the media and say "look what they're saying about me," and his cultists lap it up. It doesn't really matter much if he meant it or not.
He's always on about how much the media hates him, so it'd be right in character as a way to troll them, and it's an easy click bait headline. He may not be that concerned with the people, but it'd be a bad look to gather a bunch of people in dangerous conditions to let them die of heat stroke.
There was a rally not long ago where there was an issue with the podium. Some headline made it sound like he was unstable and shaking and had to hold on to the podium for stability. In reality the podium was wobbly and he quipped something like "oh no, it's leaning to the left". It was legitimately funny and a prime example of what his base finds charming. Yet still some clickbait headline tried to spin it in a bad way. Fucking infuriating.