What did Donald Trump do today?

He demanded through a surrogate that the media stop talking about race.

In today's briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about an interview in which White House chief of staff John Kelly said that the Civil War could have been avoided through "compromise," and in which he praised the "honorable" character of Robert E. Lee. (Lee was a slaveowner who is known to have personally abused those he held in bondage.)

Asked to acknowledge the fact that many found Kelly's comments racially offensive, Sanders responded that the claim was "outrageous and absurd" and blamed the media for depicting the Trump White House as a "racially charged" place.

What counts as "racially charged" is a matter of opinion, but just since taking office, Trump--who describes himself as "the least racist person"--has personally done the following:

• gotten the United States sanctioned by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
• issued a pardon to a sheriff found guilty of refusing to abide by anti-discrimination rulings
• referred to white supremacists chanting "blood and soil" as "very fine people," earning their glowing endorsements
• assumed an African-American reporter was a personal friend of Congressional Black Caucus members, and instructed her to set up a meeting with them
• left acts of mass murder and terrorism committed by whites off of a list of terror attacks created by the White House
• gave a 742-word Black History Month address which focused mostly on individual African-American political supporters of his, and in which he seemed to think Frederick Douglass was still alive
• assumed (incorrectly) that a district represented by an African-American member of Congress was "in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested)"
• spent much of the last few months trying to shame NFL players and other black athletes for protesting police mistreatment of minorities
• issued a World Holocaust Day statement that omitted any mention of the specific racial, ethnic, or national groups targeted by the Nazi regime, and
• hired Steve Bannon.

So what?

• Presidents don't actually get to dictate how they're covered by the news media.

• Saying that nobody was offended by praise for a slaveowner's character doesn't make it true.