As a reminder, this site takes note of one thing Donald Trump does each day—even on days like today, when he does many things. It may not be the most consequential thing, or the most outrageous thing, or the thing that ends up being the headline the next day. That's a deliberate choice: one thing is enough. Trump's presidency will last, at most, 1,460 days—assuming he intends to observe the constitutional  term limit. (He's hedged his bets on that.) There will always be something: in the first four years this site ran, there were a few days we took off, but there was never a day that Trump didn't do something that virtually any American—liberal, conservative, moderate, or none of the above—would have a problem with. People can disagree about what Trump represents. What he does, we address here—one thing at a time. Good luck to us all.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He celebrated himself as only he can, and literally only he ever has.

Trump spent much of the day signing orders and proclamations. Some, like his order declaring that his administration would not recognize citizenship as it is defined in the Constitution, were mostly symbolic. Others, like his pardon of virtually everyone convicted of taking part in the violent riot he orchestrated to try to remain in power, will have vast and unpredictable consequences. 

The very first official act of his presidency, however, was solely for his own personal satisfaction: he ordered that the national period of mourning for former president Jimmy Carter be suspended so that American flags could fly at full staff.

By longstanding tradition, American flags must fly at half-staff for a period of 30 days after the death of a president. That period has overlapped with inaugurations before, most recently when Harry Truman died shortly before Richard Nixon's second inauguration. Nixon was also the only president to temporarily suspend that order, during the mourning period for another of his predecessors, Lyndon Johnson. In that case, however, it was specifically to honor returning American prisoners of war, not Nixon himself.

There is no question that Trump takes these sorts of things very, very seriously and personally. He was furious when, after the death of Sen. John McCain, flags were lowered in accordance with law and custom. Trump loathed McCain, famously mocking him for having been a prisoner of war, and issued an order countermanding the gesture of respect. He eventually backed down after veterans' groups responded with outrage.

Trump also made a deliberate show of waiting until the end of a day of golfing to order flags lowered for civil rights pioneer Rep. John Lewis, with whom he had frequently clashed. And when Rep. John Dingell died, Trump tried to convince his widow that Dingell had received military honors at his funeral only as a favor from Trump. As a veteran of World War II, Dingell was entitled to them and would have received them in any case.

Why does this matter?

• Honoring the memory of a former president shouldn't threaten a sitting president.

• Even by Trump standards, making this the very first act of his second term in office is a lot of ego-soothing.