Not really, insecure people have been doing that for millennia.

It's been a consistent play of Trump since even his campaign in 2015-2016. He says something stupid or does something stupid. His defenders say he didn't mean it like that and try to offer nuance or context, and then Trump clarifies that no, the plain meaning of what he said was exactly what he intended.

But yeah, after Hokit disparaged Michelle Obama at White House UFC fight, I had a moment of clarity that the new masculine flex is to discharge your strength to do something awful, something cruel or tasteless or obviously amoral, to demonstrate either that you are beyond the reach of consequences or because you don't care about the consequences. Another recent example is when Trump interfered with the World Cup and cancelled the red card and one-game penalty of Folarin Balogun.

I doubt that it's just manosphere-types emulating Donald Trump, but because this is a thing he specifically does time and again, it's recognizable when other people do it.