What did Donald Trump do today?

He appointed three "ambassadors" to "Hollywood," but forgot to tell them.

Today, Trump announced on his private social media site that he was appointing three former movie stars as "special ambassadors" to Hollywood. He didn't say what they were supposed to do. All three men he "appointed"—Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone, and Mel Gibson—endorsed him in the past election. Gibson, at 69, is the youngest of the three. 

As is often the case lately, both Trump's staff and the targets of these "appointments" were unaware of his intentions before he put them online. 

While this may seem trivial, it is part of a larger pattern that is emerging with Trump. He's declared a number of fictional "ambassadorships" and "departments" and "agencies" for his allies and supporters, to say nothing of "White House advisor" titles for relatives and donors. None of them have any legal authority unless and until Congress authorizes them and budgets for them, which seems unlikely—but they can exert real influence over Americans' lives with none of the accountability or conflict of interest rules that real government employees are bound by.

Trump's last actual advisory council on the arts resigned en masse in 2017 when he praised the neo-Nazis at the deadly Charlottesville riots as "very fine people."

Why does this matter?

• There's more to governing the country than handing out party favors to friends.

• Lack of fictional ambassadors is not the biggest problem LA is facing right now.

• It's not totally clear Trump understands what he is (or isn't) doing here.