Digs directed at the President or the administration are and always have been well within the Overton window in American journalism, and previous Presidents and administrations have just seen them as a fact of life and brushed them off.

Thus “milquetoast”: an implication that any reaction to this is, objectively, an overreaction.

That the current President is a habitual over-reactor does not change that fact. It just means that you can paradoxically be taking a heterodox / outré stance by saying objectively milquetoast things.