What did Donald Trump do today?

He made up for his missed Saturday golf game with a Monday golf game.

As this site has noted before, Trump plays golf so often, and spends so much time away from the White House, that any given round is not really newsworthy. But today's round has larger implications, because it marks the end of what turned out to be a 48-hour period in which he "honored" the 17 victims of the Parkland shooting by not playing golf 45 minutes away.

Trump was eager to publicize his sacrifice at the start of the weekend, dispatching an aide to tweet that he would not be playing on Saturday in spite of the excellent golf weather. Some White House aides reportedly viewed the Parkland tragedy as a "reprieve" from a string of political bad news, and Trump himself tried to turn the mass murder into a reason why he should no longer be investigated in connection with the Russian election attack.

Funerals and memorials for those slain--officially, the reason Trump abstained from golf on Saturday--continued today. So did protests led by the surviving students themselves. Trump spent between 8:55 A.M. and 1:42 P.M. at Trump International Golf Club. 

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if a president has this much trouble even going through the motions of empathy.

• A president who sees human tragedy in terms of how it will help him do political damage control isn't worthy of the office.