Take it as whole.
Donald Trump the candidate - the one who received multiple deferments from military service because of bone spurs that somehow have never interfered with golfing - said more than once that Sen. John McCain wasn't a hero because he was captured in Vietnam and spent more than five years there as a prisoner of war.
Donald Trump, the president, often disrespected McCain at political rallies, and refused to use his name earlier this month in signing a defense policy bill named for McCain.
Donald Trump, after McCain's death on Saturday, nixed a White House statement that called the senator a "hero." Trump instead told staffers he would tweet - and he did, offering "hearts and prayers" to the McCain family, but saying nothing at all about McCain himself.
Then on Monday, Donald Trump made yet another contemptuous statement. He allowed the half-staff American flag over the White House - which by law had been lowered for a required two days upon McCain's death - to be raised high again.
Normally, a president would issue a proclamation ordering U.S. flags be flown at half-staff for the death of a prominent U.S. official until he or she is buried. McCain's funeral is planned for Saturday.
But Trump, for nearly three days, made no such proclamation, and later Monday after the flags went back down to half staff, repeatedly ignored reporters questions about McCain, his death or the flag.
Take it as whole. This is the president of our country - a guy who routinely wraps himself in the American flag and claims to be supportive of veterans - showing us his true dark soul.
And, yes, veterans - along with the rest of us - noticed.
"By lowering flags for not one second more than the bare minimum required by law, despite a long-standing tradition of lowering flags until the funeral, the White House is openly showcasing its blatant disrespect for Senator McCain's many decades of service and sacrifice to our country as well as the service of all his fellow veterans," AMVETS national Executive Director Joe Chenelly said in a statement.
Eventually, Trump bowed to the outrage. Late Monday afternoon, the White House flag came back down to half staff, after "widespread criticism of raising it during mourning for McCain," The Washington Post reported. The White House press secretary's office issued a statement, but not one containing the word "hero." It read in part: "Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain's service to our country and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment."
It wasn't that Trump didn't know better before all the hubbub. He had issued timely proclamations for former First Lady Barbara Bush and for the late Sen. John Glenn.
John McCain - who ran twice for president and will be eulogized Saturday by the two presidents who defeated him, George W. Bush and Barack Obama - did not go quietly into the good night.
He wrote a farewell letter to America, thanking us for the "privilege" of serving in uniform and public office. That letter was read Monday morning by McCain's former campaign manager Rick Davis. The letter reads, in part:
"Fellow Americans We are citizens of the world's greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil. We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.
"We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do."
That division and tribal rivalry played out Monday even in Collegedale, where the large flag hanging over the Collegedale Veterans Memorial Park was not lowered as was the flag at City Hall. Retired Dr. David Young said he asked city hall officials why, and was told that some members of the community had insisted that if the flags were fully raised at the White House, a half-mast flag at the park would be a slap against the president. Young said the Collegedale mayor later told him she would see that the flag was lowered. No doubt, the president's belated proclamation made her task easier.
Jon Meacham, a Chattanooga son and a presidential historian, noted early Monday that Trump's lack of presidential leadership and pettiness marked "yet another example of his inability to bring disparate forces together - even on ceremonial occasions."
"John McCain, in death," Meacham said, "is performing the unifying function that the incumbent president is congenitally incapable of performing."
Taken as a whole, almost nothing with Donald Trump shocks us anymore - no amount of pettiness, no amount of shamelessness, no amount of apparent moral corruption.
The fact that we have now become so numb to Trump's classless actions may be the real horror of this sad man's administration.