Is it really worth making yourself a laughing-stock to hope the press runs with it and maybe you score a few political points a whole year before the election?

Is it really worth making yourself a laughing-stock to hope the press runs with it and maybe you score a few political points a whole year before the election? If this unnerves/angers the wrong people, he could lose his job and collective CIA morale too. I'm not totally buying that he's really this incompetent, but dragging down Clinton seems a bit far-fetched as a reason this was intentional.