Dana Milbank is a columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group. Email: danamilbank@washpost.com. Photo

President Trump displayed his innate grace and decency last week by spiking a White House statement honoring the late Sen. John McCain’s life. Monday morning, the flag over the White House was (until criticism poured in) back to full staff, six days before protocol says it should have been.

Even for Trump, this seemed churlish. Unless there is another explanation: John McCain is not dead.

When McCain’s family put out the news that he had discontinued treatment for his terminal brain cancer, this was done “to take media attention” from Senate candidate Kelli Ward, and, according to Ward herself, replace it with a “narrative that they hope is negative to me.”

Ward had unsuccessfully challenged McCain in the 2016 Republican primary in Arizona, so it makes complete sense that, two years later, McCain would arrange his death to divert attention from Ward’s bus tour.

Furthermore, according to a conspiracy theory network popular among some Trump boosters, when McCain supposedly died, he did not succumb to cancer but took his own life to avoid being hauled off to Guantanamo Bay and put before a military tribunal for his longtime work helping Islamic State terrorists and others. (And before he died, he concealed his criminal ankle bracelet by wearing a medical boot on his leg.)