What did Donald Trump do today?

He spent the day figuring out who besides himself was to blame for a racist meme he posted.

Early this morning, Trump posted a meme to his private microblogging service that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. This is a racist trope even older than Trump, but it plays into 19th-century ideas that Trump actually believes and endorses, namely that people like him have "good genes" while people from other races or cultures are like "rats" or "vermin" or "dogs."

The White House's initial reaction was to say that the meme was a harmless joke. Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt released a statement this morning claiming that it was a harmless joke, adding, "Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public."

By mid-afternoon, with the video still up and both parties expressing anger, Trump's PR team changed their stance. They said it had been posted inadvertently by a staffer, who they refused to name. (If so, the staffer was working well after midnight, and just by coincidence posted right after another late-night post Trump hasn't disavowed.)

But that raised a whole host of even more troubling questions. If so, why wouldn't Trump identify the staffer? How could anyone tell the difference between a "real" Trump tweet and one he found politically inconvenient after the fact? Which of the more than thirty posts that "Trump" spent the working day on are genuine? How many people were involved in the "mistake?" How many people can post as though they were Trump, and does he know who all of them are? Why did everyone in Trump's own party—including his own press secretary—initially have no trouble believing that Trump himself was the one who had knowingly posted a racist meme? And if Trump wasn't involved, why did the video stay up long after it became clear that posting it had been a "mistake?"

These questions aren't theoretical. Trump's post on social media can have dramatic effects on diplomacy, financial markets, and even international military postures. It's not uncommon for him to go on posting binges of a hundred or more posts in the course of a few hours, and racist imagery is par for the course.

Then, this evening, reporters on Air Force One asked Trump about the post directly. His explanation was that he himself had approved the tweet, but had not watched the one-minute-long video all the way to the end to the point where "there was some kind of a thing that people don’t like." 

Trump refused to apologize, pinning the blame on the still-unnamed staff who also didn't notice the racist imagery. "Certainly if they had looked, they would’ve seen it, and probably they would’ve had the sense to take it down." But he did say he wouldn't be firing or revealing the mystery person or persons in question.

To summarize: where this particular racist depiction of Black Americans as apes was concerned, Trump was at first responsible, then absolutely responsible, then not responsible at all, then finally sort of involved, but not ultimately responsible.

Why does this matter?

• Americans of every race, creed and color deserve a president who doesn't make gutter racist "jokes." 

• The fact that nobody thought this was beyond the pale for Trump tells you how bad it is.